Raspberry Pi has formally launched the M.2 HAT+, its first official accent to utilize the PCI Specific lane out there on the brand new Raspberry Pi 5 — whereas a firmware patch for the board brings preliminary help for booting from Non-Unstable Reminiscence Specific (NVMe) storage behind a PCI Specific change, as discovered on third-party PCIe add-on boards.
“The Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ lets you join M.2 M-key peripherals, comparable to NVMe drives and AI [Artificial Intelligence] accelerators, to your Raspberry Pi 5,” explains Raspberry Pi’s James Adams of the launch at present. “It supplies quick (as much as 500MB/s) information switch to and from these peripherals, and is in the stores at present, from our community of Accredited Resellers, priced at simply $12.”
The wait is formally over: the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ is accessible at present, for simply $12. (📷: Raspberry Pi)
Raspberry Pi introduced the M.2 HAT+ concurrently the Raspberry Pi 5 itself, making use of the primary end-user accessible PCI Specific lane on a mainstream Raspberry Pi mannequin to supply high-speed high-capacity storage. Whereas the Raspberry Pi 5 launched late final yr, although, the M.2 HAT+ has taken just a little longer to prepare — and, because of this, has been overwhelmed to market by alternate options from firms together with the corporate previously referred to as Pineberry Pi, Pimoroni, SupTronics, 52Pi, and Waveshare.
Even with the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ out, the third-party alternate options provide an added bonus over the official design: help for PCI Specific Gen. 3, in comparison with a Gen. 2 restrict on the official board. Whereas this runs the Raspberry Pi 5’s PCI Specific lane exterior its formally rated spec, it roughly doubles the throughput doable — taking it from the roughly 500MB/s doable on the official board to round 1GB/s.
“Whereas in a really perfect world we might have launched the M.2 HAT+ concurrently Raspberry Pi 5, it was necessary to not rush issues,” Adams says of the board’s late launch. “There have been nonetheless just a few unresolved questions, notably across the two ‘spare’ pins on the 16-pin FFC [Flat Flexible Circuit] connector. Whereas these pins carried I2C alerts in our earliest prototypes, in the long run the Raspberry Pi PCIe Connector specification allocates them to fastened features: one as an influence allow for downstream gadget energy, and one as a board detect and wake sign.”
The board helps M.2 M-key 2230 and 2242 drives, however not the extra frequent bigger footprints. (📷: Raspberry Pi)
“And we wished to ensure that our product actually was a HAT+,” Adams continues, “which in flip meant we needed to resolve just a few final wrinkles within the Raspberry Pi HAT+ specification. Raspberry Pi specs, like our 40-pin GPIO [General-Purpose Input/Output] connector and our three-pin debug connector, typically change into de facto requirements for the remainder of the business, and now we have a duty to get them proper first time.”
The corporate hasn’t simply been engaged on the {hardware}, both: a firmware pull request merged this week provides preliminary help for utilizing an M.2 NVMe drive as a boot gadget when it sits behind a PCI Specific change — as with third-party HATs that help two or extra drives, or a single drive alongside one other PCIe gadget like a community card or AI accelerator.
The Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ is accessible from all Raspberry Pi resellers now at $12, and helps M.2 M-key 2230 and 2242 drives. Extra data, together with schematics to be used as a reference design in constructing your personal Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe HAT+ units, is accessible on the Raspberry Pi web site.