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Ask HN: How much would the Raspberry Pi Zero cost in the 1980's?

3 pointsby glovesover 9 years ago
Interested... for the spec the Raspberry Pi has, how much would it have cost historically to purchase?<p>- A Broadcom BCM2835 application processor - 1GHz ARM11 core (40% faster than Raspberry Pi 1) - 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM - A micro-SD card slot - A mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output - Micro-USB sockets for data and power - An unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header - Identical pinout to Model A+&#x2F;B+&#x2F;2B - An unpopulated composite video header - Our smallest ever form factor, at 65mm x 30mm x 5mm<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;raspberry.piaustralia.com.au&#x2F;products&#x2F;raspberry-pi-zero

3 comments

wnkrshmover 9 years ago
If you go by the price of the FLOPS the system has, you can get a price for a similarly powerful system from the 80s in inflation-adjusted USD today.<p>According to Wikipedia, the hardware with the lowest cost per 1.0 GFLOPS was the Cray X-MP [1], so you&#x27;d have to pay around USD 42M in today&#x27;s currency for the computing speed of the Raspberry Pi Zero (I assume 1.0 GFLOPS for the Raspberry Pi Zero) in 1984 (~18M USD in 1984&#x27;s dollars).<p>You could get an MB of RAM for USD 1,331 (1984&#x27;s currency) in 1984 [2], which adds up to roughly USD 1.5M in today&#x27;s currency.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;FLOPS#Hardware_costs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;FLOPS#Hardware_costs</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jcmit.com&#x2F;memoryprice.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jcmit.com&#x2F;memoryprice.htm</a>
glovesover 9 years ago
Clearly alot of the technology is newer than the 80&#x27;s - more interested in a general idea of how far we&#x27;ve come...
osullivjover 9 years ago
Same as a Sinclair ZX81? Approx 70GBP for the assembled system, 50GBP for the kit.