
Raspberry Pi now with 512MB RAM - tiernano
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2180
======
i386
> If you have an outstanding order with either distributor, you will receive
> the upgraded device in place of the 256MB version you ordered.

Awesome news since I've been waiting a very long time for mine to ship!

~~~
zdw
Exactly. 3 months here.

~~~
HNaTTY
I registered with RS 4.5 months ago (ordered ~4 months ago) and just received
the 512MB upgrade and shipping email today.

------
janus
This just arrived at my email inbox:

Your Raspberry Pi order was despatched today.

If you ordered a Raspberry Pi board as part of your order we are pleased to
inform you that we have sent you the upgraded 512MB Revision 2 board to thank
you for your continued patience.

We hope this upgrade is acceptable to you.

~~~
georgemcbay
I got this same email today from Newark/element14. My order, which I placed
about a week ago, still says they won't be shipping until Nov 1st though.

------
coob
Awesome, mine is supposed to be delivered today!

We're planning on using it to control an entire room… AC via the GPIO,
lighting via a USB power relay and TV/Soundbar via HDMI-CEC. Tying all of this
into an API to be controlled by iOS apps. Excited!

~~~
DannyBee
Humorously, you'll find the CEC part (which was designed to do this) the
hardest to get working well.

I've done something similar in my woodworking shed, I have a raspberry Pi that
controls the dust collector, air filtration, and some other stuff. It also
turns on a nice little colored light when my wife IM's me :)

Also i'm sure you know this, so this is more for others reading the comment,
but you shouldn't control anything like the AC _directly_ from the GPIO. You
should isolate it.

~~~
coob
I know very little about hardware hacking aside toying a little with Arduino.

There is a low voltage hook on the AC system that is specifically designed for
this sort of use - although it will probably still require some sort of low
voltage relay.

The room has been purpose built with remote control in mind so all of the
lights etc have separate switches in a specially designed cupboard.

As for the HDMI-CEC, the only thing we really need it for is volume up/down on
the sound bar. This is because the TV itself is a Sharp Aquos which has it's
own remote control protocol that works over either IP or RS232 and can do
power on/off and source changing. The TV's own CEC will control the sound bar
volume with the TV's remote but errors when I try it using the IP/RS232
protocol – hence the need for separate HDMI-CEC. I've been diving into libcec
which has now added native support for the RPi and it looks like sending
volume up/down is relatively simple.

------
CrazedGeek
I love/hate that, in the three months since I placed my order for an RPi, it
keeps getting upgraded before I can even get my hands on the dang thing. Ah
well...

~~~
upinsmoke
I cancelled my order a couple of weeks ago, because they keep delaying it.
Waited 3 months.

~~~
RutZap
This is weird.. I placed an order with element 14 and I received the RPi in
less than 3 weeks. To be honest I am a little bummed as I got mine less than a
month ago .. and I have the 256MB one... Could have done with 512

~~~
RossM
Farnell (element14) have generally been very good with fulfilment of orders,
RS not so much. Got my e14 in 5 weeks (ordered at release), RS one never came
after months so cancelled it.

------
nvr219
This is great news for the people who are building the raspberry pi-powered
vaporizer - <http://raspberryhigh.wikia.com/wiki/Raspberryhigh_Wiki>

~~~
jivatmanx
Rasberry Pies Forever

------
MartinMond
Really awesome that they could do that!

But I have no idea what I'd use the additional 256 MB for, in my experience
the bottleneck so far has always been the CPU.

~~~
qznc
In many cases you can trade speed for memory or vice versa. For example, a
good garbage collector provides better performance than most manual
allocators, but needs two or three times as much memory. Likewise, use dynamic
programming and cache values extensively.

~~~
NickPollard
How do good garbage collectors provide better performance than manual
allocators? I'll admit to being fairly under-educated when it comes to garbage
collectors, but I don't see how they would improve the performance of manual
allocators. Are they faster at the actual allocation, or are they better at
layout and cache coherency of the data allocated? I would have thought it
would be incredibly difficult to match the efficiency of good manual
allocation strategies.

Disclaimer: I work in games, where controlling and managing memory allocations
(particularly heap allocations) is critical to maintain low frame times, which
is why I'm interested in this.

~~~
jharsman
Garbage collected systems typically implement allocation with a simple pointer
bump. This is possible because values are moved in memory by the garbage
collector, updating references automatically. You can then compact all the
empty space when collecting garbage, making allocation easy.

This is obviously faster than malloc which is what people compare with when
they say allocation is faster with a garbage collector. Collecting the
garbage, i.e. de-allocation, can be more expensive though, since it might
require scanning large parts of the heap.

Since games generally use region based allocators , the performance gain is
probably very small there. If you make lots of calls to malloc, then the gain
would be larger.

~~~
bitwize
But you pay for it on the back side when it comes time to, heh, collect. There
was a paper which suggested it takes five times as much RAM for a GC'd program
to equal the coorespondng manual-allocator program in terms of performance:
Hertz and Berger's "Quantifying the Performance of Garbage Collection vs.
Explicit Memory Management".

If you care about performance you will avoid the garbage collector like the
plague. Best to write it in C, C++, etc.

~~~
Evbn
Yes, the entire topic of this thread is that by spending more RAM on GC, you
can save CPU for memory management.

~~~
bitwize
But you don't actually save that much CPU and it's certainly not worth having
to spend five times your working-set size just to _equal_ explicitly-managed
memory in performance terms.

Seriously, if you want cheap allocations use a freaking allocation pool.
They're not that hard to implement in C++.

------
Roritharr
They should work on the availability. A friends Startup isn't progressing as
fast as he'd like to because he can't buy enough Raspberrys...

~~~
eru
They could turn it into a partial auction: I.e. allow people to pay more than
the asking price. Highest bidder gets paid first. All the excess goes to
charity---which could be the Raspberry Pi foundation itself, and thus towards
making for Raspberry Pi's available for needy people later on.

~~~
freehunter
The RPi Foundation has said they didn't do this initially because they don't
need the money. I doubt they're in worse financial shape now, so it seems
unlikely.

~~~
eru
Yes. But instead of letting people buy them for the asking price, and
pocketing the difference on ebay, RPi Foundation should pocket the difference
themselves.

Of course, they don't do this because they want to keep everything simple, and
might even get reputational damage out of an auction. Also last time I talked
to the guys (HN London), they were constrained by the founders time more than
anything else. So they wanted to keep running the foundation as simple as
possible.

As for the money: They could always donate to Doctors Without Borders or
something like that.

~~~
beagle3
No. They don't do this because that would actually increase the price of the
RPi to its (commercial) market value, which they do not want.

Think about it this way: If they auctioned, and people value the Pi to $45, it
would be impossible to get it for $35 because the price would never go that
low.

However, the way they did it, some people get a bargain (they were willing to
pay $45 but only had to pay $35), but some people get it at the intended price
(which is still a bargain).

And the probability of winning the lottery of who actually gets one, becomes
one that depends on persistence and not on direct monetary expense.

~~~
Evbn
Nice in theory, but doesn't really work on practice, as markets are too
efficient for transferrable goods.

Also, it is poor theory for a good with unlimited eventual production
capacity.

They could put a serial number / batch number on each one, and sell the first
many at a huge premium, and then then pour all those profits into selling
later units at a huge discount.

~~~
beagle3
Apparently, it did work in practice for them, starting from the 3rd week or so
- most people who wanted one, got it at the official price. The people who
wanted one _right now_ paid whatever the scalpers were asking for.

They are optimizing for price=const, which they believe they could support ad-
infinitum. Doing what you suggested would cause price fluctuations, if the
premium dries up and they can't offer the discount any more.

Sure, there was a short transient period where it didn't work perfectly. But
it was short. And now everyone can get one at $35, and would be able to do so
in the future as well.

------
compilercreator
People interested in the Pi may also be interested in the Parallela board
kickstarter: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-
su...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-
supercomputer-for-everyone)

$99 board with dual-core ARM Cortex A9 and a 16-core accelerator chip

------
patrickgzill
I got a CubieBoard from CubieBoard.org specifically because it came with more
RAM and had a faster CPU. So seems RPi is responding well and trying to grow
their market.

~~~
3amOpsGuy
That device had passed me by, this was a useful link, although it appears
there are problems getting the boards shipped out.

The specs look excellent for the price.

------
djhworld
That's annoying for us early adopters but oh well. Good news for people still
waiting to receive theirs

~~~
jentulman
I thought that for a moment, but I'm consoling myself with the fact my
purchase has helped this happen (in a tiny tiny way). Every cloud has a
silicon lining, I have a new toy and unintentionally I did a little bit of
good.

------
pjmlp
Great!

Can we now turn the Pi into a new version of the Amiga 500?

~~~
vyrotek
Ah, the nostalgia. My father still has his multiple Amigas stored away. I
believe it was on the Amiga 2000 which he first taught me how to program.

I bet a raspberry pi with Amiga OS installed on his TV would make his day. :)

~~~
pjmlp
Now you made me feel old. :)

I learned to program in a Timex 2068, many many moons ago. :)

------
precisioncoder
Makes me really glad I delayed ordering mine. I kept putting it off due to
site crashes in the beginning, then the wait times. Mine will probably just be
a toy so I'm happy letting other people enjoy theirs first. Plus that means
they will generate some cool online projects and support I can look at when I
start playing with mine.

------
nitrogen
The Pi would be perfect if only they can fix the problems with USB and
isochronous transfers that prevent the Kinect from working. There was mention
of work being done on this in the comments, so here's hoping a kernel update
solves the USB issues.

------
Zenst
Been waiting until my local Maplins get them in (there doing that) and as I
prefer to walk into a shop then this might explain why they never got any in
end of September. Good news and good move.

~~~
meaty
I wouldn't bother waiting for Maplin. They made a big flap about stocking
Arduino boards and kits and have they ever got any in? No!

<insert rant about how Maplin rocked in the 1980's but went down the pan>

~~~
adaml_623
On a side note that is marginally related to the Pi. Does anybody know of any
electronic stores that run electronics courses/nights to get
people/kids/students involved in electronics.

I know that gaming stores sometimes hold tabletop gaming nights which is
logical.

It seems to me that Maplin/Tandy/DSE/etc are missing a trick in terms of
getting people actually interested in and knowledgeable about the things they
sell.

~~~
Evbn
You might have better luck at a local college. A friend learned welding at
community college (after earning a four year university degree)

------
IgorPartola
I wonder what they are doing with all the 256MBhard boards they have left. It
would be pretty tight timing for them to get all the old units sold at the
exact same time.

~~~
topbanana
They don't have any. They sensibly waited to announce this until they were
already shipping the 512MB variant.

------
tominated
Of course this happens on the day I finally receive mine...

------
cheema33
I ordered 4 today from Element 14, for a project I am working on. I was joking
with a friend that I expected that they would ship them in 2013 sometime. And
then I got a UPS tracking number in the email later the same day. My jaw is
dropped.

------
Zenst
Great news though I personaly would prefer to see another ethernet port (yes
can add one via USB but not at full ethernet speeds). Would make a brilliant
firewall box then and one area I'd love to have one in place.

------
SeanDav
Love this idea but really it would be great if they could offer a more
expensive and powerful version as an option.

~~~
eru
You can already buy more expensive and powerful computers (including computers
with an ARM chip).

------
lobster45
Even though the price is $35, you can not get it anywhere for $35. Most of the
places sell them for $40 and over.

~~~
tapsboy
The last time I checked on MCM electronics website, they were selling it for
$35

------
simarpreet007
OMG, Canada Newark got 100+ of them and they're all gone! I feel so lucky that
I got one!

------
vindicated
I just got mine 3 days ago with 256 MB RAM.. now I'm wishing it had been
delayed.

~~~
lie07
I feel the same way :(

------
program
RS specs page has been updated:

[http://raspberrypi.rsdelivers.com/product/raspberry-
pi/raspb...](http://raspberrypi.rsdelivers.com/product/raspberry-pi/raspberry-
pi-type-b/raspberry-pi-type-b-single-board-computer/7568308.aspx)

I'm very happy that my order has been delayed.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Just FYI: People have probably downvoted you because your link requires
authentication (and redirects non-authenticated users to
<http://authenticate.rsdelivers.com>).

~~~
orik
downvote?

------
umrashrf
That's some news!

------
tonyblundell
So there _are_ people using them to do something other than watch rip-off
movies on their TV :-)

