HACKER Q&A
📣 andrewstuart

Why can't the Raspberry Pi be properly cloned?


Since the earliest days of the PC. companies having been creating clone computers.

There's big money for whoever can identically clone the functionality of a popular computer - witness Compaq.

Is it "hard but doable by appropriately skilled modern engineers", or "impossible"?

Surely the rewards are there for whichever company can do it properly.

So why is there no proper clone of the Raspberry Pi?

  👤 pwg Accepted Answer ✓
One aspect to keep in mind. In those "earliest days" the target that was being cloned was the IBM PC, which Wikipedia [1] quotes as having an introductory price of $4,455 in 2020 dollars.

Wikipedia also quotes a price range of $4.00 to $70.00 [2] for various Pi model introductory prices (they don't quote as "2020 dollars").

There is much more room for profit available to someone who is cloning a $4,455 product than there is to someone cloning a $4 to $70 product. The comparative very low price of a Pi vs. an IBM PC from 1981 likely makes it not profitable to "clone" and so no one is attempting to clone the Pi's.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

👤 tony-allan
This isn't really a space where anyone is attempting to beat the already competitive price point of the Raspberry Pi.

Most similar boards are created with their own vision such as faster storage or more networking but at different price points. These include the PINE A64-LTS, Orange Pi 4B, or BeagleBone.

This market also includes many carrier boards for the Raspberry Pi compute module (3 or 4). For example the Turing Pi V2 mini-ITX cluster board with four Raspberry Pi CM4 modules!

👤 detaro
Because Broadcom won't sell anybody else the processor, and nobody who can make chips is going to waste their time and incur the legal risk of cloning some weird Broadcom SoCs when they could instead do something more sensible. And the only reason people would buy a Pi clone would be if it was better value for money, so now they also have to beat a quite cheap product in price.
👤 joezydeco
What magical thing is in Raspberry Pi that cloning it would be an advantage over other Linux SBCs/SOMs or EVKs like Beagle?

Oh wait I know the answer - the price. You want it cheaper. But it's already subsidized by Broadcom so how do you think a cloner would make any money off of it?

Or are you trying to use it in a product and you need a second source? Because that way leads to doom as well.

👤 opless
It was. By odroid.

However Broadcom didn't appear to like where/how they sourced the components and refused to sell them any more chips.

https://hackaday.com/2014/07/30/a-real-raspberry-pi-clone-no...

👤 pyb
Presumably, Any company could clone the Pi, but they'd never be able to compete on price.

It would be great for industrial uses if someone made a pricier, but more readily available clone.

👤 hvgk
There are a bunch of clones out there.