イギリスのケンブリッジ発であるクレジットカードサイズのコンピュータの価格は$25ないし$35だ。販売を開始するまでは、数千台も売れれば良いほうだと考えていたそうだ。しかし予想は良い方向に大幅にずれ、発売初日にModel B Piが10万台も売れることとなった。全モデルの累計では昨年10月までに175万台を売り上げ、そしてそこからさらに売り上げを伸ばして、現在は250万台にまで伸びている。
In common with every other ARM-based SoC, using the VideoCore IV 3d graphics core on the Pi requires a block of closed-source binary driver code (a “blob”) which talks to the hardware. In our case, this blob runs on the VPU vector processor of the BCM2835 (the SOC or System On a Chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi); our existing open-source graphics drivers are a thin shim running on the ARM11, which talks to that blob via a communication driver in the Linux kernel. The lack of true open-source graphics drivers and documentation is widely acknowledged to be a significant problem for Linux on ARM, as it prevents users from fixing driver bugs, adding features and generally understanding what their hardware is doing.
Earlier today, Broadcom announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license. The source release targets the BCM21553 cellphone chip, but it should be reasonably straightforward to port this to the BCM2835, allowing access to the graphics core without using the blob. As an incentive to do this work, we will pay a bounty of $10,000 to the first person to demonstrate to us satisfactorily that they can successfully run Quake III at a playable framerate on Raspberry Pi using these drivers. This competition is open worldwide, and you can find competition rules here which describe what you have to do, and how to enter.
ここで重要なのは、単なる標準的な検索機能ではなく、自然言語を利用したスマート検索がサポートされているという点だ。たとえば、「ファイルを1行ずつ読む（read files line by line）」というような条件で検索ができる。このツールの検索機能はBingが受け持ち、サービス自体はWindows Azure上で走る。