Raspberry Pi sells 2.5 million units, founders launch $10,000 Quake 3 competition

More than 2.5 million units of the Raspberry Pi mini-computer have been sold, co-founder Eben Upton announced on the official website, launching a $10,000 competition to run Quake 3 the Linux-based hardware.

Raspberry Pi was released in February 2012 with the goal of providing accessible means of fostering computer science in schools.The credit card-sized computer plugs into a TV or monitor and keyboard can play high-definition video and games. The mini computer features a Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC), which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, VideoCore IV GPU and 512 MB of RAM, currently.

"The success of the Pi has allowed us to make substantial financial contributions to a range of open-source projects, including XBMC, libav, PyPy, Pixman, Wayland/Weston, Squeak, Scratch and WebKit, and we are continuing to sponsor projects like these," Upton wrote. "But it's always felt like we have a piece of unfinished business."

The lack of true open-source graphics drivers and documentation "is widely acknowledged to be a significant problem" for Linux on ARM, according to Upton. He adds that semiconductor company Broadcom's recent release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core and a complete source release of the graphics stack will allow developers access to the graphics core without using the blob.

As an incentive for developers to use the drivers, the co-founder launched a worldwide $10,000 competition for the first person to successfully run Quake 3 at a playable framerate on Raspberry Pi using these drivers. More information about the competition are located here.