Raspberry Pi passes 2.5 million sales, $10,000 Quake 3 contest launched

Raspberry Pi micro-computer sales have passed 2.5 million, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can make Quake 3: Arena run acceptably on the device.

In a post on the Raspberry Pi Foundation site, co-founder Eben Upton revealed that that 2.5 million of the Linux-based micro-computers have been sold since the Model B edition launched February 29, 2012.

Upton explained that off the back of this success, the foundation has made, "substantial financial contributions to a range of open-source projects," but that he feels the group still has, "unfinished business."

He said that the Raspberry Pi's VideoCore IV 3d graphics core within its ARM chip system requires closed-source binary code to work with the device, and that the lack of open-source graphics drivers and literature on the matter is a, "significant problem for Linux on ARM." He fears there's a lack of knowledge on how the hardware functions from this standpoint, and as such, driver bug fixes and the evolution of features is taking a hit.

Upton went on, "Earlier today, Broadcom announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license. The source release targets the BCM21553 cellphone chip, but it should be reasonably straightforward to port this to the BCM2835, allowing access to the graphics core without using the blob.

"As an incentive to do this work, we will pay a bounty of $10,000 to the first person to demonstrate to us satisfactorily that they can successfully run Quake III at a playable framerate on Raspberry Pi using these drivers. This competition is open worldwide, and you can find competition rules here which describe what you have to do, and how to enter."

Are you tempted to give this a try? Let us know below.

Via GI.biz.