The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic computer science in schools (while actual applications are much more diverse including for use in space).

[12] The Foundation was rededicated as an educational charity for promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools and developing countries.

Secure Digital (SD) cards in MicroSDHC form factor (SDHC on early models) are used to store the operating system and program memory, however some models also come with onboard eMMC storage[63] and the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer can also make use of USB-attached SSD storage for its operating system.

[64] Raspberry Pi 5 supports booting from NVMe SSDs attached directly to the PCIe bus with an appropriate adapter or HAT.

[65] The Broadcom BCM2835 SoC used in the first generation Raspberry Pi[66] includes a RISC-based 700 MHz 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S processor, VideoCore IV graphics processing unit (GPU),[67] and RAM.

The earlier V1.1 model of the Raspberry Pi 2 used a Broadcom BCM2836 SoC with a 900 MHz 32-bit, quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor, with 256 KB shared L2 cache.

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B uses a Broadcom BCM2837 SoC with a 1.2 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, with 512 KB shared L2 cache.

The Raspberry Pi Pico uses the RP2040,[80] a microcontroller containing dual ARM Cortex-M0+ cores running at 133 MHz, 6 banks of SRAM totalling 264 KB, and programmable IO for peripherals.

Alongside the new processor and graphics unit, the monolithic design of the earlier BCM2711 has been replaced with a CPU and chipset (southbridge) architecture, as the IO functionality has been moved to the Raspberry Pi 5's custom RP1 chip.

[82] While operating at 700 MHz by default, the first generation Raspberry Pi provided a real-world performance roughly equivalent to 0.041 GFLOPS.

Newer versions of the firmware contain the option to choose between five overclock ("turbo") presets that, when used, attempt to maximise the performance of the SoC without impairing the lifetime of the board.

[91] The early designs of the Raspberry Pi Model A and B boards included 256 MB of random-access memory (RAM).

The Raspberry Pi 3B+ features dual-band IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, and Gigabit Ethernet (limited to approximately 300 Mbit/s by the USB 2.0 bus between it and the SoC).

[105] Raspberry Pi models with a newer chipset can boot from USB mass storage, such as from a flash drive.

The source of time information can be another computer on the local network that does have a real-time clock, or to a NTP server on the internet.

[101] If an external battery is not plugged in, the Pi 5 will use the Network Time Protocol, or will need to be set manually, as was the case in previous models.

It is also capable of booting a very minimal Linux kernel, with patches to remove the dependency on the mailbox interface being responsive.

Technology writer Glyn Moody described the project in May 2011 as a "potential BBC Micro 2.0", not by replacing PC compatible machines but by supplementing them.

[269] The Centre for Computing History strongly supports the Raspberry Pi project, feeling that it could "usher in a new era".

[270] Before release, the board was showcased by ARM's CEO Warren East at an event in Cambridge outlining Google's ideas to improve UK science and technology education.

[279] The Raspberry Pi community was described by Jamie Ayre of FOSS software company AdaCore as one of the most exciting parts of the project.

[280] The community developed a fanzine around the platform called The MagPi[281] which in 2015, was handed over to Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd by its volunteers to be continued in-house.

[283] As of January 2012[update], enquiries about the board in the United Kingdom have been received from schools in both the state and private sectors, with around five times as much interest from the latter.

[284] The CEO of Premier Farnell said that the government of a country in the Middle East has expressed interest in providing a board to every schoolgirl, to enhance her employment prospects.

[285][286] In 2014, the Raspberry Pi Foundation hired a number of its community members including ex-teachers and software developers to launch a set of free learning resources for its website.

These programmers are making an effort to modify the Raspberry Pi into a cost-affordable solution in energy monitoring and power consumption.

The device has a number of interfaces, most notably RS-485/232 serial ports, digital and analogue inputs/outputs, CAN and economical 1-Wire buses, all of which are widely used in the automation industry.

[291] In January 2021, TECHBASE announced a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 cluster for AI accelerator, routing and file server use.

The device contains one or more standard Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4s in an industrial DIN rail housing, with some versions containing one or more Coral Edge tensor processing units.

During his mission, British ESA astronaut Tim Peake deployed the computers on board the International Space Station.