Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ goes on sale

Priced at $12, the HAT+ from Raspberry Pi themselves provides data transfers of up to 500 MB/s via the Pi’s single PCIe 2.0 channel. Basically, it provides a way to add super-fast NVMe (nonvolatile memory express) SSDs (solid-state drives) to your Raspberry Pi 5, whether for redundancy or, more probably, to just add a load more storage to the Pi.

The official Raspberry Pi version – other versions had been available, for example from Pimoroni (right, priced at £30, supporting two drives) – is available to buy from the Raspberry Pi network of Approved Resellers.

The Raspberry Pi team highlight that they have tested a wide variety of NVMe drives and other peripherals for the HAT.

Why was the HAT not released at the same time as the Raspberry Pi 5, back in back in September 2023? Raspberry Pi explains the huge effort involved in producing the Pi 5, which featured three new custom chips (the Broadcom BCM2712 application processor, Dialog/Renesas DA9091 PMIC, and the RP1 I/O controller), new production processes (intrusive reflow for connectors, and routed board singulation), and a completely redesigned production test system…

They explain:

“So while in an ideal world we would have launched the M.2 HAT+ at the same time as Raspberry Pi 5, it was important not to rush things. There were still a few unresolved questions, notably around the two “spare” pins on the 16-pin FFC connector. While these pins carried I2C signals in our earliest prototypes, in the end the Raspberry Pi PCIe Connector specification allocates them to fixed functions: one as a power enable for downstream device power, and one as a board detect and wake signal.”

“And we wanted to make sure that our product really was a HAT+, which in turn meant we had to resolve a few last wrinkles in the Raspberry Pi HAT+ specification. Raspberry Pi specifications, like our 40-pin GPIO connector and our three-pin debug connector, often become de facto standards for the rest of the industry, and we have a responsibility to get them right first time.”

Note that if your Raspberry Pi 5 has up-to-date firmware, and an M.2 HAT+ attached, the installed PCIe device will be probed at power on – if it’s an NVMe drive, it will be available as a boot source.

You can read our news story on the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ from our Technology Editor.

See also: Raspberry Pi friendly LoRaWAN Module for long-range wireless comms