Eben Upton x SunFounder: On RP2040, Pico, and Growing the Raspberry Pi Ecosystem
July 07, 2025
At SunFounder, we've long admired the innovation and vision behind Raspberry Pi. As we continue to expand our offerings around the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, we had the incredible opportunity to speak with Eben Upton, the co-founder of Raspberry Pi and the driving force behind its groundbreaking hardware design.
In this brief but insightful interview, Eben shares the inspiration behind the RP2040 microcontroller, his thoughts on how the Pico series complements Raspberry Pi's mainline boards, and his perspective on SunFounder's role in the Raspberry Pi community.
What inspired the Raspberry Pi team to design its own RP2040 microcontroller instead of using an off-the-shelf chip?
Eben Upton: We had a desire to build a microcontroller-class board, but were dissatisfied with the off-the-shelf chips that were available to us. As an engineering team, we've been using microcontrollers for decades, and we know what we like: deterministic behaviour, large amounts of on-chip memory, low-latency access to the physical world. RP2040, and more recently RP2350, are our attempts to build the 'perfect' microcontroller, bringing the best features of classic microcontrollers like AVR8 into the modern, 32-bit, multicore era, with enough memory to support high-level language runtimes like MicroPython.
How do you see the Pico series complementing the main Raspberry Pi boards?
Eben Upton: We see many of our users using Pico products alongside main (i.e. Linux-based) Raspberry Pi products to add real-time or low-power capabilities. Of course, the Linux-based products also make great development platforms for Pico, and third-party RP2040/2350-based boards.
Do you know SunFounder? What’s your impression of us as part of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem?
Eben Upton: We've learned over the years that we succeed when we make our products available through our customers' preferred channels, and when we work in partnership with companies who can enthusiastically represent our products properly in their local markets. SunFounder has been selling Raspberry Pi products since 2014, and have done a fantastic job of bundling our boards with a wide range of complementary components to help our users have a richer experience with their Raspberry Pi.
What would you like to see companies like SunFounder do more of to support and grow alongside Raspberry Pi?
Eben Upton: Really, keep doing what they're doing already! Evangelise our products, and keep thinking of innovative ways to get people involved in the Raspberry Pi mission. We have an exciting future ahead of us!
Final Thoughts
Eben's vision for the RP2040 and his support for community - driven innovation continue to inspire us at SunFounder. We are proud to be part of the
Raspberry Pi ecosystem and look forward to helping more makers, educators, and developers unlock new possibilities with our Raspberry Pi-based kits and accessories.
Stay tuned - we have exciting projects coming soon that continue this mission of accessibility, creativity, and exploration.
Special thanks to Ignacio Siccardi for his effort and dedication in making this interview possible.
Interviews from: Ignacio Siccardi
