Raspberry Pi 4

CPU

The Raspberry Pi 4 features a Broadcom BCM2711 SoC, which is a significant upgrade over previous models. It retains the quad-core design of the BCM2837 used in the Raspberry Pi 3 series but uses more powerful ARM Cortex-A72 CPU cores based on the ARMv8 64-bit architecture, running at either 1.5 or 1.8 GHz depending on the chip revision.^[5] Early models used the B0 stepping (an earlier chip version), while later revisions adopted the C0 stepping in mid-2021, which offers improved thermal performance and the higher clock speed.^[6] The BCM2711 is about 50% faster than the BCM2837 used in the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The processor includes 32 KB of L1 cache, 48 KB of L1 instruction cache per core, and a shared 1 MB L2 cache.^[5]

GPU

The BCM2711 integrates a VideoCore VI GPU, replacing the VideoCore IV used since the original Raspberry Pi. It is clocked at 500 MHz and includes a new Memory Management Unit, allowing it to access more memory despite being a 32-bit GPU.^[5] The GPU supports the OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.2 APIs.^[7][8] The multimedia capabilities include hardware decoding of H.265 (4Kp60) and H.264 (1080p60 decode and 1080p30 encode) video.^[5]

RAM

The Raspberry Pi 4 uses LPDDR4 RAM running at 3.2 GHz. It is available in variants with 1, 2, 3, 4 or 8 GB of memory, with the 8 GB model introduced a year after the initial release and the 3 GB model introduced in April 2026.^{[9][10][5][11]}

I/O and connectivity

The Raspberry Pi 4 introduced several upgrades to input/output (I/O) capabilities. USB connectivity was improved from four USB 2.0 ports on earlier models to two USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. A dedicated PCI Express bus connects the USB controllers and a natively attached Ethernet controller, enabling true Gigabit Ethernet speeds (on the Raspberry Pi 3 the internal USB 2.0 connection limited speeds to 300 Mbit/s).^[12][5] The single full-sized HDMI port on previous models was replaced by two micro-HDMI ports, allowing for dual-display output.^[5][13] The computer can drive two 4K displays at 30 Hz or one at 60 Hz, while the Pi 5 improves on this with support for two 4K displays at 60 Hz.^[14]

The board includes two DSI display ports (only one exposed on the Raspberry Pi 4B) and two CSI camera ports (only one exposed on the Raspberry Pi 4B).^[5] It also supports up to six I²C and UART interfaces and up to six SPI interfaces (five exposed on the Raspberry Pi 4B).^[5] Bluetooth was updated from version 4.2 to 5.0,^[15] and the power input switched from Micro-USB to USB-C.^[16] With an optional HAT board installed, the Ethernet port supports Power over Ethernet.^[5]

I/O and connectivity

Unlike the traditional form factor, Compute Modules do not have traditional I/O ports, and instead are meant to connect to another board to provide IO functionality. The connectors on the Compute Modules can be used for the same interfaces as other Pi 4 models and the Compute Module 4 exposes the PCIe 2.0 bus that was previously used for USB 3.0. The freeing of the PCIe bus allows designers to use it for other use cases, such as native NVMe storage or faster networking.^[20] Because of its smaller connector, the Compute Module 4S does not support this PCIe functionality, the second HDMI port or Ethernet.^[18]

Models of Compute Module 4 that have an eMMC chip do not have the capability to connect to external eMMC or microSD storage.^[21]

Compute Module 4 I/O board

The Compute Module 4 IO Board is an official daughter board designed to give Compute Module 4 users easier access to its various interfaces. While the board does feature many of the same ports as the original Pi 4 Model B, the Compute Module 4 IO Board also adds and changes various connectivity options.^[25]