What just happened? Raspberry Pi is now accepting orders for its M.2 HAT+, an add-on board that allows Pi 5 owners to connect M.2 M-key peripherals to their single board computers. The accessory sells for $12 and is available to purchase from approved resellers as of writing, so long as you can find one in stock.
When the Raspberry Pi 5 was first introduced, the team teased a prototype HAT+ that connected to the computer's PCIe 2.0 bus. Following months of revisions and testing, that product morphed into the M.2 HAT+ that's now available.
The testing process was extensive, as Raspberry Pi wanted to ensure wide compatibility out of the gate. In one example, the team worked with an NVMe drive manufacturer to iron out a bug preventing a drive from working correctly.
The Raspberry Pi 5 hit the scene last September and is quite capable. It features a 2.4 GHz quad-core, 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor alongside a VideoCore VII GPU, which supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.2. The combo is good for a 2-3x CPU speed improvement and twice the GPU performance compared to its predecessor, and there's loads more I/O bandwidth.
Pi 5 is capable of driving two 4K60 displays simultaneously over HDMI and additionally supports dual-band 802.11 ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0. There's also a microSD card interface with SDR104 support, dual USB 3.0 ports supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation, two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet jack, and the aforementioned PCIe 2.0 x1 interface to attach speedy storage.
The company claims the new add-on board enables up to 500 MB/s data transfer to and from connected peripherals, and that connected NVMe drives can be used as a boot source. Raspberry Pi has published full documentation on the M.2 HAT+ for those interested in a deeper dive.
Those hoping to get their hands on an M.2 HAT+ in the near future look to be out of luck. A quick check of several approved resellers turned up zero available inventory and it's not clear when restocks are expected.
