Raspberry Pi Forums

In a future raspberry pi, along with all the features everyone wants, I would love to see a second, gigabit, RJ45 port on the pi. I think this would open up a whole new world of possibilities for the pi as powerful home routers, NASs and a lot, lot more!

All Pi SoCs to date have a single, external, interface. That is one--count it, one--USB 2 port. The maximum data rate for USB 2 is 480Mb/s, so even without the various protocol overheads involved, you're never going to run a single connection at better that something less than half the 1Gb/s rate.

In order to get what you want, several things would be needed, any of which would require a new SoC, so the up front development cost is going to be in the multiple millions of dollars out of *somebody's* pocket,

Besides the question where you would put a second Ethernet jack, it would take either an SoC with USB 3 (10Gb/s) or one or more native GbE interfaces. I can see general utility to USB 3 and--in some limited areas--utility to GbE, but having 2 GbE ports would be specifically supporting a very small set of uses. It would be far better to stick with the current 4 USB ports and a single Ethernet port, even if those were USB 3 and GbE and then let those that need a second GbE buy their own USB 3 to GbE adapter.

The SMI interface has been opened up a bit recently.
Is there a Intel/Motorola 16 bit interface 1Gbs chip?
Could the Pi feed one fast enough? 40MHz at 16 bit is 640Mbs.

Most seem to be 10/100Mbs.

USB 3/C would be the future but expensive, needing new chips.

Gavinmc42 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 19, 2017 4:28 am

The SMI interface has been opened up a bit recently.
Is there a Intel/Motorola 16 bit interface 1Gbs chip?
Could the Pi feed one fast enough? 40MHz at 16 bit is 640Mbs.

Most seem to be 10/100Mbs.

USB 3/C would be the future but expensive, needing new chips.

It is very difficult to think of anything that would make a usedul improvement in the Pi that *wouldn't* require a new SoC...and therein lies the rub. Personally, I think a new SoC is going to happen, and may--indeed--have already happened. However, the RPT/PRF do not talk much about future plans, and ones they have talked about in the past have turned around a bit them in the posterior. Look how long it took from initial mentions until the 7" touchscreen was released, and then it was some additional months to fix the backlight control. The Pi2A was canceled. The Pi3A was, at least in concept, expected about a year ago. I do not blame the RPT/RPF for keeping their cards close to their vests.

Harvs wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 18, 2017 11:50 pm

In a future raspberry pi, along with all the features everyone wants, I would love to see a second, gigabit, RJ45 port on the pi. I think this would open up a whole new world of possibilities for the pi as powerful home routers, NASs and a lot, lot more!

How does this embrace the Education and Learning aims of the RPF ??

There are already products on the market which provide the functionality you desire.