
Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed - mmastrac
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/02/raspberry_pi_model_2/
======
schappim
What's the same:

\- Same form factor as the model B+ (your enclosures and daughter boards
should still fit).

\- Same full size HDMI port

\- Same 10/100 Ethernet port

\- Same CSI camera port and DSI display ports

\- Same micro USB power supply connection

What has changed:

\- A new turbocharged Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core system-on-chip with
performance at least 6x that of the B+.

\- 1GB of RAM

Source: [http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-
pi-2-...](http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/products/raspberry-pi-2-model-b)

~~~
arbuge
Under the "Same" column, it looks like you need to add "Same price - $35".

I stocked up on B+s over Christmas - oh well...

The "at least 6x" performance claim should be "at least 3x" by the way, and
even that is an estimate, not a guarantee. The 3x is on a single thread
comparison, the 6x is on a somewhat synthetic multicore benchmark test.

~~~
hayksaakian
Can you return them? If its less than 30 day...?

~~~
ksrm
In the EU, the consumer rights directive allows you to return most goods
bought online up to 14 days after delivery.

------
zumtar
Interesting to see a Broadcom logo and chip markings visible on the CPU now.

Love 'em or hate 'em, I suspect Broadcom are very happy about this as those
chip markings are prime marketing real estate.

Considering the phenomenal success of the previous Raspberry Pi units this
probably formed part of the negotiations for the CPU price.

There are of course other considerations such as trace lengths and
availability of packages for both the CPU and LPDDR2 but that logo being
directly in the hands of the engineers of tomorrow makes a big difference.

The previous models used a PoP (Package-on-Package) stack of the CPU and SDRAM
and now they've moved to discrete SoC and DDR2 packages (with the DDR2 chip
now on the underside of the PCB).

~~~
pjc50
One of the announcement posts said "this Broadcom chip will be available for
sale subject to meeting MOQ". So I'm expecting someone will do a kickstarter
to buy 10k of them and reship them as singles. No longer doing POP moves it
from "nope" territory into something the average small assembly house should
be able to cope with. Not that you need to do this given that the compute
module exists, but I'm sure someone will want to do it.

------
wyager
I wish they would release one with DMA based gigabit Ethernet. That always
seems to be the bottleneck for me.

~~~
20kleagues
It would have been much sense with the newer CPU. My old Pi hiccups at very
high IO over ethernet, specially when I am processing the incoming streams.

~~~
geerlingguy
Same here; I've found the CPU to generally be the limiting factor, with IO
(network or disk) only sometimes coming into play. The somewhat faster CPU
could definitely help in this regard, but doesn't the network jack go through
a USB 2.0 bus? If that's the case, that's probably the limiting factor.

------
rasz_pl
Wonder if they fixed USB problems (dma/internal bus bottlenecking or
something). Info about quad core CPU is a bit sketchy, either its one of
Cortex cores, or BCM tweaked ARM11/bumped L1 cache to max 64KB value and/or
added proper L2 cache.

So many unknowns.

Edit:

Milhouse, Team-Kodi Member: "ARMv7 and NEON instructions"
[http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=217040&pid=1911780#p...](http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=217040&pid=1911780#p..).

WOOOHOOO now we are cooking, Broadcom is back in business, first hiring real
flesh and blood open source GPU drivers developer, now this. Next thing you
know they will open up DSI port specification or something :o

~~~
tonylemesmer
Some good detail here from one of the RPi / Broadcom engineers:

[http://jamesrandominfo.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/raspberry-
pi-2...](http://jamesrandominfo.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/raspberry-pi-2-b-first-
impressions.html)

------
tbrock
Why would anyone buy this over the much more powerful ARMv7 odroid-C1 for $35
that has been out for months now?

~~~
bayesianhorse
The Raspberry Pi is a platform optimized for and bundled with its community.
The Raspberry Foundation can produce/license any conceivable number of these
devices at the same price point. The difference of for example $35 vs $70
doesn't matter very much for individual buyers. It does matter when dealing
with educational budgets and a desire for predictable spending. Even when a
school/hobbyist course requires students to buy their own devices, even $5
differences can be a big deal.

The fixed price, high bulk, cooperation with education initiatives and
governments, all translates to a relatively homogeneous, unfragmented "fleet"
of devices, which just isn't the norm in small computers.

Beagle Bone, the Odroid series, and several other products are technically
superior in most ways. But they don't have a comparable community size, and
aren't focused on the educational sector as much. In some ways, these models
attach to the Raspberry Pi community.

~~~
pjc50
You've got it exactly. The whole thing is modeled on the original BBC computer
learning project of 30 years ago. The physical Pi device is just a platform
for the delivery of educational material. People miss this because most of the
commentators here don't need the educational material as they're not
schoolkids or educators.

The Foundation is doing this in a highly vertically integrated way because it
gives them predictability and a guarantee that the hardware meets the
educational needs and also the "marketing" needs of turning kids into
enthusiasts. That's why Minecraft for the Pi is important, for example.

~~~
DanBC
One important difference is cost - the BBC micros were expensive compared to
their competition.

------
Al__Dante
It's a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU. ARM7, it's official:
[http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-
sale/](http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/)

~~~
escap
"For the last six months [ RPi team has ] been working closely with Microsoft
to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2. Microsoft will have
much more to share over the coming months. The Raspberry Pi 2-compatible
version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers.

Visit WindowsOnDevices.com today to join the Windows Developer Program for IoT
and receive updates as they become available."

[http://dev.windows.com/en-
us/featured/raspberrypi2support](http://dev.windows.com/en-
us/featured/raspberrypi2support)

~~~
jenscow
I wonder if Microsoft have helped in making the PI capable of running Windows
10, for the same price.

~~~
benn_88
No, it's just Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi engineering team that made the
product happen. At the point we knew Pi 2 would be happening, the conversation
with MS started and they started work porting Windows to it - with a little
help from our engineers.

\- Ben from Raspberry Pi

------
nathan_f77
Awesome!! I just wish they would release one with onboard Wifi instead of
ethernet. I have no statistics to back this up, but I'm pretty sure that USB
Wifi adapters would be the most common accessory.

~~~
sdenton4
I use the onboard ethernet pretty constantly, mainly because I find the
wireless to be finicky and hard to troubleshoot when you're running a headless
setup. I can always plug in an ethernet cable, though...

~~~
gorgas
Agree. However Finally I was able to keep an uptime greater than 2 months on
my Pi by using a wifi dongle and a bunch of cron scripts to keep alive the
connection when my router reboots or the dongle 'freezes' which seems is a
common issue when using RPi of any kind :(

~~~
gcb0
that's probably a bad dongle.

i connect my htpc via a Wi-Fi USB dongle as well. it runs both Linux and
windows 7. and despite the os and drivers one model always hang after a day or
so. another one, different model from same brand is online for months at a
time.

it's mostly badly designed/tested hardware.

~~~
gorgas
I was expecting a answer like "my dongle X just works on the Pi" :-) I do not
doubt it is a problem with the hardware or the drivers, I just say it is a
common problem with many dongle vendors specially in the Pi. I know I could
buy a RPi-certified dongle, but I do not like wasting hardware if I can fix it
just with a few scripts. No offense :)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
WiFi on the Pi 'just doesn't work.'

You can get it working for a while, but it's nowhere near the reliability of
standard domestic WiFi.

I've built various sensor/hardware projects and tried various dongles, and
I've _always_ had to switch back to a cabled connection.

------
lucaspiller
Here is the official announcement:

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-
sale/](http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/)

It has an ARMv7 processor.

------
seba_dos1
The most important info is missing: does it still require a non-free blob to
even just boot Linux?

~~~
wmf
Broadcom is still Broadcom.

~~~
userbinator
It doesn't look like BCM is intending to release any more
datasheets/programming information either, which is not surprising. There will
probably never be any detailed information released, officially or otherwise,
on any BCM SoCs, even after they're long EOL'd.

As far as openness is concerned the RPi is basically a smartphone/tablet SoC
devboard, with most of the hardware proprietary - while its Chinese
competitors (Allwinner, Mediatek, Rockchip, etc.) are officially quite closed
too, the docs for many of their SoCs are available (admittedly leaked; but
they seem to be turning a blind eye to it.) They're also at least a Cortex-A7.

I wonder how the RPi2 compares to this:

[https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-...](https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-
LIME/open-source-hardware)

Dual 1GHz A7s, 512MB, SATA, HDMI, USB, Ethernet (integrated on SoC, not
through USB), fully open-source, in the same price range.

~~~
lovelearning
Or this:
[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433)

Quad core, 1 GB. Released just 2 months ago. Same price as the Pi.

~~~
dataminded
It's not just the hardware peripherals, tutorials, books and community count
for a lot also.

~~~
lovelearning
Agreed. Among all the SBC forums, the Pi's is the friendliest community I've
come across. You're almost guaranteed to get a reply and it's usually a useful
one.

~~~
userbinator
Try asking for something as simple as electrical specifications on the GPIO
pins (Broadcom released the GPIO registers, but oddly enough not the
electrical specs):

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=63362](http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=63362)

------
wyldfire
How does this compare with the ODROID-C1?

[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433)

~~~
tmuir
The ODROID-C1 looks very nice. My main hesitations would be available drivers
and community size. They may have drivers for everything, I don't know. It is
nice to see that a somewhat recent kernel is available though (3.10).

I recently ported several projects I had from beaglebone black to an Olinuxino
A10 Lime. A lot of stuff was relatively painless, but I was never able to get
Node.js to install. I also got bit in the ass because I laid out and ordered
PCBs assuming all of the SPI channels had drivers, when only one was there (of
course, not the one I chose).

Embedded Linux constantly reminds you that you are standing on the shoulders
of giants, and you can go from feeling like a wizard to feeling like an idiot
real quick when some part of the system isn't working. That's where having the
communities like beaglebone's and raspberry pi's really pay off.

~~~
papaf
Driver support in the Odroid C1 downloadable Ubuntu image is complete (as far
as I can tell) and Ubuntu runs quite well.

I was unable to get X running on Arch Linux despite the drivers being
available.

------
WhitneyLand
ARMv6 still? I don't see how that's necessary to save on the BOM. I hope
legacy code was not the deciding factor here.

~~~
lovelearning
According to [1], these will be ARMv7 architecture Cortex-A7 cores. Looks like
we'll know for sure only when the foundation announces a public release.

[1]: [http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/02/02/raspberry-
pi-2-model-...](http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/02/02/raspberry-
pi-2-model-b/)

~~~
Maxious
Linked article on the Register has been updated to confirm ARMv7/NEON
[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=v0LVywBi](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=v0LVywBi)

------
bayesianhorse
Any news if the Raspbery Pi 2 will have USB 3.0 ports? That seems to be a good
selling point for the Odroid XU3 currently...

USB 3.0 ports would mean better performance as NAS or multimedia recording
solution, as well as alleviating some of the current troubles with usb
performance.

~~~
tomaskafka
Are they necessary? My Radxa (quadcore 1.7 GHz ARMv7) cannot exceed 6 MB/s
read from HDD no matter how hard it tries with NTFS formatted disc (for
comparison, Raspberry Pi A was doing about 600 kB/s max in a same
configuration).

Both are far under USB 2.0 speed.

------
rcarmo
Well well. I'm going to hold off an wait until someone can benchmark this
against the ODROID-C1, though, largely because the original Pi design had a
few shortcuts and I'd like to avoid any teething issues (been using ODROIDs
for a while, got full hardware support in Ubuntu and Android and don't have to
put up with Debian 7.x).

------
20kleagues
Finally more power for graphics. I am seeing some interesting VR projects with
the more horsepower, especially since VR is THE thing right now. And the pi is
light enough for head-mounting!

~~~
mappu
I'd love to see this happen. But i think that's very wishful thinking, outside
of some very simple scenes - my R9 270 struggles to maintain framerate with
some DK2 demos and the pi's VC4 isn't remotely in the same league.

~~~
20kleagues
I think we will need to look at streaming scenes from a more powerful machine
rather than creating them on board. I don't believe we are ready in any way to
process that much information on such a small system at this time (HoloLens
also gives out quite a lot of heat from its on board processor). The old pi
had trouble streaming higher bitrates, though then we still have the same
ethernet so I am not sure how much is possible.

------
yAnonymous
ARMv7... so Ubuntu will finally run on this. No more hours of compiling
software.

~~~
sime
Yes and looks like Snappy Ubuntu Core is already ready to run on it as well:
[https://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/02/02/snappy-ubuntu-core-
on...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/02/02/snappy-ubuntu-core-on-raspberry-
pi-2/)

------
sagarm
The only place I've found to buy this thing so far is here: [http://uk.rs-
online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-deve...](http://uk.rs-
online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/8326274/)

Where can I buy this thing in the US?

Any info on whether there will be an RPi-compatible Python library for
accessing GPIO?

------
aceperry
Nice update, and still at the $35 price point. Too bad it's still ARMv6. It
would be nice to have ARMv7 which is where all of the high performance stuff
is.

Edit. I take that back, it will be ARMv7 arch. Other articles state that the
new Broadcom SOC will be using A7s. That makes it huge for this price point.

------
mrmondo
Still no GbE which is a massive disappointment for me.

------
bugsense
Install resin.io on it and smile :) I could even use them for light-weight app
server :)

------
majc2
Will it run some version of flash? (and yes I tried gnash to no avail).

I spent the weekend explaining to an 8 and 6 y/o that they can't share and
look at other Scratch projects at scratch.mit.edu on the RPi :(

~~~
andybak
Not sure if this might help:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8982251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8982251)

Probably a performance hit - but with the js performance arms race - maybe
not!

~~~
0942v8653
That's Scratch 1.4—normal Raspbian comes with it built-in, actually—the
trouble is Scratch 2.0, which is fully flash-based.

~~~
andybak
Wow. That was an unusual technology choice to make in 2013.

------
programminggeek
Am I weird for wanting to use this for really simple web hosting?

~~~
20kleagues
Nope. The Pi makes a lot of sense for a simple web server with a robust
SQL/NOSQL database backend running with Node/Go. If you have a good internet
connection with a good upload speed, you can easily run a server able to take
a couple of hundred hits a minute. It is certainly a better option than using
the cloud for prototyping, where a wrong for loop can instantiate loads of
instances and bill you a hell lot.

~~~
nkozyra
The Pi does not make sense for any level of consumer-targeted production (dev,
stage or live) beyond "oh hey, it works." "A couple of hundred hits a minute"
is also not impressive in the least, even for something of the Pi's stature.

I also don't think the stack would matter all that much at this point - IO
blocking would be happening at the application level, not the architectural.
Node, Go, Ruby, Python, PHP ... it really wouldn't matter. SQL versus NoSQL is
also a non-issue in this case.

I also wouldn't take something very underpowered instead of the cloud just
because I hadn't configured my cloud host to keep things within reason (ie no
autoscaling at all, which is what you'd expect for hobby-level prototyping.

tldr; don't eschew better options for the Pi unless you don't understand how
your cloud host works.

~~~
20kleagues
I agree it makes no sense for consumer-targeted production. I have played with
the pi and run a small robot to collect intermittent data from twitter and
store it on Mongo, which I can remotely access using the web service. At the
same time, I would not want to go all the way to the cloud for such a small
thing. I guess it depends on the use-case.

------
AceJohnny2
ARM11/(ARMv6)? I thought that core was a dead-end that was quickly replaced by
the Cortex-A (ARMv7) series. Surprised to see ARMv6 in new hardware in this
age...

~~~
chadzawistowski
The RPi2 uses an ARMv7 Cortex A7 processor, not an ARMv6.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Thanks, I see the article has been updated (it stated ARM11 this morning), but
too late to edit my comment.

------
ryan-allen
While a bit more expensive, I purchased a Hummingboard [1] instead of a Pi,
and the performance was great! I had a NodeJS/Postgresql app running on it for
kicks. I was surprised at how quick it was.

[1] [http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/linux-sbc-
spe...](http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/linux-sbc-
specifications/)

~~~
nacs
> While a bit more expensive

Actually at least twice as expensive (starts at $70 compared to the RPi's
$35).

And with the new RPi announced here, it's basically twice the price for
quarter/half the CPU power of the Pi (single/dual core vs 4 core RPi).

------
lmedinas
This update is very welcome and for sure it will make people create more
interesting "projects". Personally i'm very excited to get one of these to run
owncloud at decent performance in my home. Also the possibility to install
more Linux distributions or even Windows 10 will open much possibilities for
development. Well Done!!

------
cpks
I really want 2gb. I'm surprised there isn't a market of Pi-like devices, with
compatible software, but higher price points and higher specs.

~~~
RadioactiveMan
These could interest you: Odroid-C1[1] with 1GB RAM for $35 or U3[2] with 2GB
for $69

[1][http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433)
[2][http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138745696275)

------
Gnewt
Anyone know where this can be purchased now?

~~~
jamestnz
From the usual Pi manufacturing partners, e.g.:

[http://www.element14.com/community/community/raspberry-
pi/ra...](http://www.element14.com/community/community/raspberry-pi/raspberry-
pi-bplus?ICID=rpimain-topban-BPlus)

EDIT: apologies, it looks like this link in fact contains the "old" B+ not the
one discussed here, my bad.

------
SSilver2k2
Excited to see how well this will help my distro PiPlay (and PetRock's
RetroPie).

Can't wait to get my hands on the hardware

-Shea

------
Thiz
Remove the ethernet port. Remove the double stacked usb ports. Use single rows
of micro USB or Lightning, 4 on one side. Make it flatter, simpler, more
beautiful. Encase it in alluminum. Steve Jobs would do it and push it through
our throats. And we would love it.

Or at least make it a premium choice, and make extra money from those who love
beauty.

~~~
vlunkr
I don't agree with encasing it for a couple of reasons. 1) The goal is to get
maximum functionality out of minimal cost. If you want to encase it you can
buy a case yourself. 2) Not including a case has encouraged the community to
get creative and sell cases, or patterns to 3D print one. Inspiring creativity
is another goal of the foundation.

I wouldn't mind if it was a little smaller, but again, they want to keep the
cost down.

------
phkahler
How is the wayland/weston support going? This thing should be quite capable
now.

------
ropable
Maybe the Kano will be able to perform worth a damn, now (post-upgrade).

------
davexunit
It still requires proprietary firmware to function at all. No thanks. Please
fix this serious flaw!

Edit: And to make things worse, they are giving away gratis Windows 10
licenses for it!

~~~
FrankenPC
This is actually a great boon. The Windows development environment is
incredibly inviting to beginners and it has a lot of power. Linux may be more
flexible and open, but it's really hard to get started with when you have no
experience programming.

~~~
davexunit
Microsoft says "you are not allowed to learn about our software". Besides
being an inferior programming environment, it is also an anti-educational one.

------
exabrial
Need gigabit!

~~~
viraptor
Just curious, (if you can share) what are you doing on your RPi that saturates
the 100Mb?

~~~
werkshy
I run mine as a NAS, and the performance is pretty terrible. The portability
is great though! I'm somewhat nomadic at the moment so it's great to have a
1TB NAS that I can pack in my laptop bag (1TB external 2.5" drive + rpi:
minimal weight too)

------
gregorymichael
How do I purchase this in the US?

~~~
mikefivedeuce
Element14 should have it

------
higherpurpose
Why didn't they just skip to Cortex A53? It would've been worth waiting a year
longer for that.

------
brudgers
The headline gave me hope. Alas no button on the front for overclocking. I am
wistfully disappointed.

~~~
glynjackson
Really? Build a button yourself to overlock! The Pi is about giving you the
tools, now, go forth and build.

~~~
brudgers
First I want to revel in inch thick _Computer Shopper_ whist.

