Raspberry Pi 2: 4 cores, gigabytes of RAM, six times more performance

Perhaps the price will remain the same - $ 35

Without much preparation, the head of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Iben Upton, told The Register about the new Raspberry Pi model. According to his statement, now it is a relatively full-fledged computer, looking at the characteristics of which you do not need to repeat "it costs only $ 35."

The main changes of the new model called Raspberry Pi 2 Model B: a single-chip Broadcom BCM2836 system with four ARMv7 Cortex-A7 cores with a frequency of 900 MHz and Broadcom VideoCore IV 250 MHz, 1 gigabyte of RAM, at least six times more performance than B +, and free windows 10 . Here are the results of issuing the uname -a command to the new board . Outwardly, the second “pie” differs little from B +




Prior to this, since the launch of the Raspberry Pi in February 2012, there has always been a BCM2835 chip in all models, which had one single ARM1176JZF-S core with a frequency of 700 MHz. The second revision of Model B and Model B + has 512 MB of RAM, in all the rest it costs only 256. In the new model, only the processor and memory size have changed, full-size HDMI, 10/100 Ethernet, CSI and DSI ports, power supply via MicroUSB and, of course , remain the same , the form factor is slightly larger than a bank card.

The number of performance improvements relative to Model B + was obtained using the multi-core sysbench benchmark , that is, programs using only one thread will improve performance not so significantly. But even when running Sun Spiderindicators in comparison with B + increased approximately three times. New power can come in handy in embedded systems for image processing, Upton said. There are many enthusiasts who want to create computer vision based on OpenCV. Of course, you can greatly optimize OpenCV to launch the first Raspberry Pi on the DSP, but as a result, the microcomputer is corny lacking power.



The price of Pi 2 is still unknown, but it is likely that it will be left at $ 35. Upton said that the old model B with less RAM and the same price sells well even after the launch of B + - some industrial buyers prefer to stay on the old hardware in order to avoid possible problems with migrating to the new platform. It is expected that this will happen with the Raspberry Pi 2: this year, the production of the new model will be 80%, the remaining 20% ​​is B +. The twenty-dollar A + will also remain on sale, perhaps its RAM will be updated from 256 MB to 512, but the low price remains a priority.

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is already available in some stores.. According to the head of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, about 100 thousand new model boards were produced, and the Sony factory will continue to make about a thousand a day. Now about 200 thousand Raspeberry Pi computers are sold per month, a total of 4.5 million have been sold. Today, a new version of Raspbian will also be released, which will be compatible with Pi 2. Already installed on SD cards can be updated using apt-get upgrade .

Added 15:50 MSK : Information about the free embedded version of Windows 10 for developers on Raspberry Pi will be available later , but now you can apply. Microsoft’s move is designed to enhance Redmond’s influence on the Internet of Things and increase the spread of Windows in such devices. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has been working with Microsoft for a long time, and before the arrival of Windows on the “raspberry pie”, the lack of computing power of the board in many respects prevented it.