Or at least that's the hope, based on current production rates.

At CES 2024, I had the opportunity to chat with Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi's CEO. We discussed the future of AI on the Pi, RP2040's successor, the impending launch of Compute Module 5, and current production rates of Pi 4 and Pi 5 computers—Raspberry Pi's bread and butter.

The news is good: currently (as of last week), they are manufacturing Pi 5 at a rate of 70,000 per week. By the end of January? 90,000 per week.

That would put manufacturing capacity for Pi 5 alone at 400,000 units every month.

He mentioned (and I'm sure the workers at the Sony factory where Pi 5's are made would agree!) this rate can be sustained for a time, but will taper to something more maintainable once the backlogs are clear:

I will be pleased but surprised if we have five million units a year of sustained demand at this point just for that one product.

But I suspect what we'll probably do is, we'll probably build it that way for two or three months, we'll burn through the backlogs, we'll deal with all the people who want to get them in first in single units early, then in multiple units early.

I asked also about AI features being integrated directly into Pi silicon, and he suggested addons are the way to go for the foreseeable future:

Some of your users will use it, some of your users won't use it, and you're taxing the users who don't use it to help the users who will [...] that's the reasoning that's kept things like an ADC off the board for over a decade.

And Compute Module 5 when?

[Eben:] I think we've committed CM5 is happening.

[Jeff:] I remember on the forum someone mentioned first half of 2024...

[Eben:] Yeah.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube: