Introducing The Raspberry Pi 2

TL;DR It’s called the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. Quad core ARM Cortex A7 with one Gig of RAM. It’s the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi Model B+. Available now at Newark, Element 14, Allied, and RS Components. It’s the same price as the old one. You’re not a child and you should learn to read.


The original Raspberry Pi released, three years ago, was looking a bit long in the tooth when it was first launched. That’s to be expected for a computer that sells for $35 USD. Three years is a long time in the world of electronics, and the Pi is due for an update. It’s here, now, and the biggest change is a faster quad-core chip, a better processor architecture, and 1GB of RAM.

The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B features a quad-core ARM Cortex A7 running at 1GHz with 1GB of RAM. This chip uses the ARMv7 architecture instead of the ARMv6 of the original Raspi. When playing around with it, it was noticeably zippier than my months-old Raspi Model B in web browsing tasks. Very, very cool, and something that opens up a few doors for CPU-intensive applications.

Although the CPU has been updated, there isn’t much else on the Pi that has changed. USB and Ethernet is still handled by the LAN9514 USB/Ethernet controller. If you’re looking for Gigabit Ethernet, sorry that’s not going to happen. We’re not going to get eMMC Flash, SATA ports, or anything groundbreaking other than the CPU with this hardware update. It’s pretty much just a CPU and RAM upgrade.

All the original ports found on the Raspberry Pi Model B+ are found on the Raspi 2; HDMI, audio, analog video, Ethernet, USB, CSI, the as-for-now unused DSI, and GPIO ports haven’t changed. Again, we’re looking at a CPU and RAM upgrade with this hardware release.

Instead of the odd Package On Package CPU and RAM stack featured in previous Raspberry Pis, the RAM has now moved to the back on the Raspi 2:

raspiback

The RAM chip is an Elpida EDB8132B4PB-8D-F, an eight gigabit DDR2 RAM that has the same clock rate as the RAM in the original Raspi. Don’t look for an increase in memory performance or speed. Instead, just be glad there’s now a full gigabyte of RAM on the Raspi.

A few of you may remember the ‘upgrade’ all those Raspberry Pi early adopters missed out on. After the first few hundred thousand Raspberry Pi Model Bs shipped, someone realized they could upgrade the RAM from 256 MB to 512 MB. It is not yet known whether the Raspberry Pi 2 will be upgraded as easily. Sixteen gigabit RAMs do exist, but now that the CPU and RAM aren’t on the same package, there’s more to consider than just plopping down a new RAM chip.

Compatibility

As far as software is concerned, just about everything that ran on the original Raspberry Pi will run on the Raspberry Pi 2. The capabilities of the Raspberry Pi 2 are a superset of the original. This is an entirely new processor architecture; the Pi 1 used a chip with the ARMv6 architecture, and the Cortex A7 uses the ARMv7 architecture. This is huge. The Raspberry Pi 2 can now run a modern Android system. There’s a ton of stuff that’s possible with the Pi 2 that was unimaginable with the Pi 1.

There is one caveat when it comes to software on the Pi. The Foundation sent me a Pi 2 and an SD card loaded up with a Raspbian distro. This worked well until I was a moron a few times and cut the power to the Pi 2 without doing a proper shutdown. The card was corrupted. I downloaded the current-as-of-a-week-ago Raspbian image. The Pi 2 will not boot this image. If you’re doing stuff with the kernel, there is a difference between the Pi 1 and Pi 2, and there will be specific disk images for the Pi 1 and Pi 2.

Interestingly, a Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ will boot the Pi 2’s Raspbian image. This is somewhat interesting, as the CPU on the Pi 2 is effectively a superset of the CPU on the Pi 1. I’ve talked to people with about a century of combined experience with ARM and Linux, and nobody knows what’s up with this.

For hardware, everything you’d expect from the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi is present on the Raspberry Pi 2. It’s the usual 40-pin expansion header we’ve all come to expect, and as far as I can tell, there is no change between the Raspi and Raspi 2.

Concerning the form factor, just about every case that is compatible with the Raspberry Pi Model B+ should be compatible with the new Raspi 2 Model B+. I’ve tested the new Pi with a case from HammondCamdenBoss, and Pimoroni Pibow Coupe. Only the Pimoroni was incompatible with the new Raspi 2, but that’s only due to a piece of acrylic interfering with the new, larger CPU. A pair of dikes quickly solved that problem sent shattered acrylic shooting across the room. Use a thin saw or file. In terms of form factor, consider this identical to the Model B+.

Other Models

There’s more than one Pi in the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, but for now, the Model A+ and the Raspberry Pi compute module will retain the old BCM2835 chipset. That’s not to say they won’t be upgraded in the future; the board layout between the Pi 1 Model B+, A+, and compute module are extremely similar around the CPU and RAM. An update to the ‘lesser’ Pis may just be a matter of futzing about with whatever EDA software the foundation uses.

Historically, the Raspberry Pi foundation has used the Model B as their flagship product that sees new innovations first. When the Model B+ received a new form factor and more GPIO pins, it took about four months for the Model A to move up to the new design standards. If you’re waiting for an ARM Cortex A7 board in the A+ or Compute Module form factor, you’ll probably be waiting until June or July.

Benchmarks and Performance

Comparisons Since the Raspberry Pi was introduced a few years ago, there has been an explosion of small, cheap ARM Linux boards. Compared to the Banana Pi, Cubieboard2, or the Odroid, the 700MHz ARM11 CPU found in the original Raspberry Pi has seemed a little anemic for the last few years. This is not a fault of the Raspberry Pi; the idea of the Raspberry Pi was to produce a small, single-board Linux computer for about $35 USD. The ‘clone’ boards like the Banana Pi and Odroid came later, with access to better, cheaper silicon, and are not constrained by the $35 USD price point. There will always be better options at a higher price point.

Any comparisons between the Raspberry Pi, ‘clone’ boards, and larger, more capable, and more expensive boards like the Hummingboard and BeagleBone Black must take into consideration the price of the board. Currently, there are few boards that match the power and the price of the Raspberry Pi 2, the Odroid C1 being the one that matches the Raspberry Pi 2 in terms of performance and capability. I do not have an Odroid C1, though, and I’m not going to phone in a comparison between the two.

I do, however, have a Raspberry Pi Model B+. Tomorrow, I will be posting some benchmarks between the Raspberry Pi 2 and a Raspberry Pi Model B+.

Power

I just so happen to have a FriedCircuits USB current/voltage/power meter sitting around. When monitoring the power consumption of the Raspi 2, there is a slight increase in power consumption over the Raspberry Pi 1.

When booting to a Raspbian desktop, the Raspberry Pi 1 draws about 290mA, dropping to about 250mA once the desktop is loaded. The Raspberry Pi 2 draws about 340mA at boot, dropping to about 270mA once the desktop is loaded. There is a slight increase in current draw from the Raspi 1 to the Raspi 2.

With a few experiments, I did determine the Raspberry Pi 2 will draw up to 500mA under heavy load. That’s the max spec for USB. If your current USB power adapter isn’t great, you might want to get a better one for the Raspi 2.

Speed

I’ll be posting something on the speed and benchmarks of the Raspberry Pi 2 tomorrow. Until then the time to boot to a desktop can serve as a sufficient characterization of the speed in the Raspberry Pi 2.

Using the same SD card in both tests, the Raspberry Pi 2 boots to a Raspbian desktop in about 22 seconds. For the same test, a few months-old Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ boots to a Raspbian desktop in about 41 seconds. Test conditions were ‘from the point the Raspberry appears where Tux should appear on the console’ to ‘when the CPU monitor in the corner of the screen bottoms out’. By any measure, the Raspberry Pi 2 is significantly faster.

Where to get one

Anyone who was around for the launch of the Raspberry Pi 1 will remember the months-long waits from Newark, Farnell, Allied, and RS components. Part of this was due to the huge demand, but a significant bit of the blame for the backorders would fall on the Raspberry Pi foundation. It’s understandable; at the time, they were looking at success they hadn’t dreamed of.

This time around, they’re prepared. [Eben] tells us there are 100,000 Raspberry Pi 2 Model Bs sitting in warehouses right now. It’s going to take a while before the new Pis make their way to Fry’s and Microcenter, but we’re looking at waiting a few weeks, not the months of the original launch.

Wrap-up

For the most part, this is simply an upgrade to the CPU and RAM of the Raspberry Pi Model B. Right now, there are no distributions or software compiled specifically for the Raspberry Pi 2, and having the software that will take advantage of the much faster, multi-core CPU of the Raspi 2 will take a while.

The faster and larger CPU of the Raspi 2 opens a few doors for interesting applications. The somewhat anemic CPU of the original Raspberry Pi limited interesting applications of a tiny Linux board. Applications like computer vision and anything where a high amount of I/O was happening at any one time were out of the question. This hardware revision will fix that.

Future updates to the Raspberry Pi will include a Model A+ and Compute Module. Those will probably appear in a few months. You’re not going to hear anything about an improved Raspberry Pi 2 or a Raspberry Pi 3.

There will be a detailed breakdown and benchmarks for the Raspberry Pi 2 posted tomorrow.


If you’re searching for the word ‘disclosure’, there it is. At my request the Raspberry Pi foundation sent me a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B and SD card for this post.

184 thoughts on “Introducing The Raspberry Pi 2

        1. Alas i bought a couple of B+ just the weekend before that launch from the seeed studio bazar store. They conveniently had – what looked like at the moment – a nice promotion just before the launch, $30 instead of $35… Insider information abuse ?

      1. Don’t worry. This is NOT a consumer Windows 10. This is Windows IoT… which is just another name of WinCE.

        And there were we thinking that M$ could change, and finally get one (1) Windows to rule them all… tsssk tsssk tsssk. It’s STILL the same mess. Windows RT (soon to be burried), Windows 10 x86/x64, Windows Phone (AKA that other Windows on ARM), and then there’s Windows IoT (or WinCE… remmember that thing that they sold previously as Windows Phone 7 which got shot down after about year and half because it used WinCE?).

        This is just hot air. To hype up expectations so people stop using all those linux-variants (and RISC OS) on them Pi’s.

    1. Microsoft, must have been unhappy that they were being locked out of the future. Influencing young minds is a powerful thing. In many ways Windows 10 on the RPi is a bad thing – more consumer than creator.

      1. Yeahhhhhh sure… Android on the Pi is bad too?
        Its a really good step by Microsoft and if they influence somebody by doing something people profit from I am not going to judge them for doing it…
        I just hope they provide an easy to use GPIO interface… If they do Windows could become a big thing on the Pi

        1. Windows does not encourage people to program bare metal. I’m not saying that the RPi does either with it’s blobs, but I would say that it would encourage people into embedded systems programing more so without support provided by Micro$oft.

          In the beginning of the computer age programs were like maths, free to be used by everyone, there was no such thing as closed source, because your program would never run on any other system without access to the source code, the architectures varied so much. These days there are very few diverse architectures left, it is like Darwinism through marketing. I see it as a indoctrination problem. If your life is filtered to only see one thing, you will never see anything.

          1. “Windows does not encourage people to program bare metal. ”

            LINUX does not encourage people to program bare metal

            BSD does not encourage people to program bare metal

            SOLARIS does not encourage people to program bare metal

            There is a REASON why we have kernel modules

          2. I do not have the option to reply to you “F”, So I’m replying to myself which is a bit odd, but I’m guessing that you will not have the option to reply to me either. I have programed bare metal, decades ago, and if Window (or iCrap) was the only OS I encountered in my lifetime, I would consider such a thing impossible. It is not a Linux vs Window vs BSD vs blah blah. It is not even about bare metal, it is opening young minds to new things to be free of constraints. And I see windows as a straight jacket of the mind.

          3. “In the beginning of the computer age programs were like maths, free to be used by everyone, THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS CLOSED SOURCE, because your program would never run on any other system without access to the source code, the architectures varied so much.”

            Yes indeed folks it’s PURE QUENTIN TARENTINO FANTASY LAND for this guy

          4. “Here kid, here’s a Raspberry Pi. I’ve put all the latest development tools on it.”

            “Thank you sir, but all I need is a web browser to do my school work.”

            “Sure, but after you do that, you can boot up Emacs and start hacking. Or maybe you’re more into VIM?”

            “Thank you sir, but I don’t have any interest in that. I might play some games.”

            “Yes, and when you’re done shooting down aliens, you can write your own!”

            “Thank you sir, but again, I would much rather just use the computer.”

            “THAT’S UNACCEPTABLE! YOU NEED TO BE EMPOWERED!”

            “Thank you sir, but could I be empowered after I do my homework and play some games?”

            “I think I see the problem here. You just don’t yet realize that you can program to the bare metal and what that freedom means!”

            “Thank you sir, that all sounds interesting. My sister might be interested in that– she’s good at programming. But I really just need a computer to look stuff up and play games.”

            “Sure, if you want to live you life on your knees, forever begging for scraps of software.”

            “I guess I’ll go to the library now. They have some computers there.”

          5. Aaaand there it is, the “Micro$oft”, the true sign of the unreasonable, “better than thou” utopian believer that refuses to understand how the real world works. And that’s also where I stopped reading. Enjoy your stay in the reality distortion field.

          1. tell us more about how all of the features of the linux kernel are carefully documented

            and then explain to us the existence of the many many programming manuals explaining in vast detail the inner workings of windows.

          2. Yet again I do not have the option to reply to you “F”, So I’m replying to myself which is a bit odd, but I’m guessing that you will not have the option to reply to me either.

            Deconstructing things, I never mentioned Linux or windows. The most I have learned in my life is when things are broken, that I can strip the cover away and find out why.

            It is product placement.

          3. Being able to deconstruct things is useful. Being able to quickly and easily load up a tool that allows you to construct something (a picture, a video, a new computer program, a new thingamabob) is useful too. Sometimes the two are mutually exclusive. Having options is always a good thing. You could load windows on a pi to do something that is easier to do in windows, you could load linux on the pi to do something for which linux is more suitable. What is wrong with that?

            You think we should hand every kid some raw processors and components and say ‘sorry, if you want to edit that picture, you’ll need to assemble these bits and pieces into a working computer’? If someone wants to learn about something, they will. if they don’t, they won’t. I was forced to take piano lessons when I was young. Hated it, and thus wasn’t good at it. Later in life, I decided I wanted to play music, so I taught myself and was quite good at it.

        2. Would you like to compare the percentage of debs/makers between those growing up on classic C64/apple2/Amiga/ST/Linux and typing shit in from PC magazines… vs those growing up on Windows downloading appz? Puh-leeze.

      2. According to Microsoft, this is not full Windows 10 but “Windows 10 for IoT”, likely a maker-friendly, dev-board-friendly stripped down version of Windows based on what they’ve said so far. Maybe we should wait to judge it until we’ve actually seen it?

        1. in other words, Redmond probably built a *nix core with a visual clone of the Win10 UI and some proprietary bits thrown in just to keep the target audience from being able to gain any true level of control. Ironic, but such is the nature of these things.

          1. Sadly, you’re right. Some people can’t see beyond their own noses and therefore look down upon anything they don’t yet understand. I don’t have a clue what Windows 10 on the RPi means yet, because I haven’t seen it. Therefore I choose to be optimistic about it instead of automatically assuming the worst.

          1. You seem to be saying the only useful things to do involve making things for customers.

            I agree making stuff to sell is useful, but I do believe making things for your own use, enjoyment or learning, or to share with other developers, can also be quite useful.

            I’m also skeptical Windows will be well supported on non-x86 hardware, or that version will really be 6X faster. But it does look pretty useful with Linux, and pretty amazing for only $35.

          2. >Microsoft already made Windows free for phones, small-screen tablets, and so-called “Internet of Things” devices under 8 inches at this year’s Build conference.

            They could extend their “free” Windows 10 license to RPi foundation as if they were OEM. The interesting part is that the whole secure UEFI boot might not be in place for RPi. :)

          3. I don’t have customers who I would target with a dev board, so for me the answer is “Yes, potentially very useful”. If after getting a RPi 2 I find that Microsoft’s Windows 10 for IoT works better than GNU/Linux on a given pet project, I’ll use it. If not, then not. I honestly don’t care, I’ll use the platform that works best for me.

            I do get why you’d ask that question, but honestly no one but Microsoft knows the true answer and they haven’t revealed anything about commercial licensing yet. Of course, that doesn’t stop the trolls and know-it-alls from decrying them from the rooftops for something they haven’t even done yet. Once again, how about we wait and see what they are going to do before automatically assuming the worst? The company has become much more open-source friendly lately; maybe that’s a permanent direction they are headed in and not just lip-service. Maybe not, but we don’t know yet.

          1. So you expect the RPi version of 10 to be equivalent to the current developer preview? Because that’s the only place I’ve seen mandatory information collection mentioned when it comes to Windows 10. Given that the final release (for PCs and for the RPi) is over 8 months away, how can we know for sure what it will entail? Short answer: We don’t, but wild speculation and foregone conclusion is the name of the game in this forum.

            Speaking of spyware, have you seen what Android phones snitch about lately? Every keystroke, every link visited, every picture taken, every GPS waypoint all gets sent back home to Mother Google even if you turn off every checkbox that even hints about privacy. But that’s okay because it’s not M$FT, right?

          2. They have to do that; because “American Information Superiority on every platform” is the only thing that keeps our vital fluids from being stolen by Terrorists or whatever terrible thing that happened last week. Think of the Children!

  1. Hard to complain about more power at the same price, but personally I think keeping the USB/HUB/Ethernet mess was a bad decision.
    But hey, there are other boards that did it right.

    1. I’m just assuming here. I’d guess unlike most SoC devices in the last…decade, those broadcom chips probably don’t have a built-in ethernet mac hence the usb ethernet mac/phy. They also probably don’t have many usb host ports, as such to be usable they need a hub.

      Someone will probably go and read the datasheet and prove me wrong, but that’s what happens when you speculate.

    2. AFAIR, that particular hub+Ethernet combo series that had some initial timing issues with the RPi USB. [cyk] is probably referring to that. Using a different chip for that would have save some issues. Linux probably has most of the drivers covered, so it doesn’t make a difference.

      It is funny that Broadcom has MAC and PHY in their IP. They make router chips, Ethernet switches, PHY etc. They could have implemented Ethernet MAC in their SoC like the SoC used in the other boards.

  2. Have you guys been told to censor negative comments etc in exchange for review units like it seems other sites have?
    Even if the hardware is amazing (Broadcom NDA’d crapfest != awesome) I think I would go for the Odroid-C1 just to spite “the foundation” for their childishness.

      1. Not to mention that the C1 has much better graphics and video cores.
        But it isn’t only the hardware that counts. The Raspberry Pi started the thing, supports the most operating systems, has the best support, etc.
        So my opinion is:
        You want:
        hardware tinkering, learning: Raspberry Pi
        home automation: Raspberry Pi
        run Android games: Odroid
        replace my PC. Odroid
        build a NAS: Banana Pi /Cubieboard

      2. better choice for what?

        The raspberry pi is an educational tool, it’s designed to be a cost effective stable platform for long term development platform increasingly low level applications. it’s designed to teach kids that if you want to get more processing done you can either upgrade, or you can improvise and write more efficient code.

        They have done well waiting this long before bowing to pressure and releasing an upgraded version of the pi. but speed is dictated by both the hardware and what programmers are capable of finding within it. that’s why console game manage to get more performance than PC titles with the equivalent hardware. advanced engineering is finding the tricks that squeeze every bit of performance from a target system. that is something a generation has forgotten and something that many of us need to re-learn.

        1. When the cost is the same for 2 platforms, the “cost effective” and “less=more” argument goes out of the window. Better architectures means you can achieve better with the same care in optimization efforts. We are not kids either, so let not limit to the “education” part.

          Seeing the RPi fumbling on engineer level like connectors placement, power supply (linear vs switch mode), mounting holes etc. vs professionally designed products from companies that have experience in the field. The platform that is better engineered get my money.

          1. From the odroid web site:

            “Can I get PCB layout file and gerber file?
            No. The ODROID project is not a full open source hardware.
            We release the schematics only.”

            and yet the odroid developers are too ASHAMED of their design to share it with us

          2. Dude, F, what is your problem? You seem to be completely down on… everything.

            Just because ODROID doesn’t want to release their PCB Layout sources doesn’t mean jack about ANY company’s happiness with their designs. I guess you have had some miracle luck with asking Intel for the design files for their latest CPUs. If a company’s willingness to reveal it’s inner workings is somehow a magical “We are not ashamed of our products” symbol, then why has it taken Broadcom so long to let us FINALLY get the video core’s documentation.

            If anything, in retrospect, ODROID’s attempted relationship with Broadcom gave us ODROID-W, which then lead us to ODROID-C1 and a (so far working) relationship with Amlogic. In the end, I’m glad both products at least exist, even if ODROID-W is soon to be discontinued due to the limited run, and hope that both RPI Foundation, ODROID, and the various other companies continue to generate these types of development boards because having more options for a project is never really a bad thing.

          3. ” having more options for a project is never really a bad thing.”

            Yes EXACTLY we want our scarce software developers to spend all of their time porting their code to yet another board, instead of working on new and more interesting things.

          4. You seem to be of the mistaken impression that the only costs that matter are the costs of hardware, and the only value that matters is hardware performance, which is odd, because it doesn’t take keen skills of observation to recognize that throughout the history of technology some things “win” despite being more expensive an/or less capable.

            Even more puzzling, people who notice their favorites go unappreciated, and gripe about it endlessly, can’t quite get to the next step, and consider whether, perhaps, there is something they are missing, something they don’t understand that might, possibly, cast light on this paradox that bedevils their existence. Occasionally, they might get an inkling, but then they, or a friend, quickly labels it as “marketing,” and rush to burn it at the stake, lest it poison their mortal soul in some unknown, but surely horrible way.

      3. Not too sure if RPi is better for learning. I don’t care if a platform is popular or not. As a matter of fact, I learn a lot more if I force myself to write my own code from chip documents. SoC that are more openly documented (i.e. no NDA) would be a better choice in my book.

        If I want a NAS, I would pick a Mini-ITX with multiple SATA, more memory, CPU horse power and run something like FreeNAS.

          1. Are you a paid professional troll ? I have not seen one positive comment by you. The hardest part is the purification of the silicon to between 99.9% and 99.9999999% required for fab work. And yes there are many people who would like to be able to deposit, dope, mask, and etch their own silicon.

        1. I kinda agree with the learning part. IMHO, it doesn’t really matter if a device is “designed” for learning. It’s really in how you use a device, or what you do on a device that determines if you are actually “learning”, or can learn something out of.

          Personally I kept buying the Raspberry pi for it’s form factor, and that it’s easily obtainable from where I live (and by that I mean not having to worry with international shipping.) If there other boards here that is as easily obtainable, and with better specs, I’ll go for those.

      4. Agreed. The cortex-A5 is architecturally about as powerful as the A7. The ODROID-C1’s 1.5GHz A5 will exhibit a significant performance boost vs a 900MHz A7 due to clock speed. Also RAM is faster (DDR3 on C1 vs DDR2 on RPI2). The C1 also has Gigabit Ethernet and Ubuntu Snappy core will be coming to the C1 soon. http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/02/02/raspberry-pi-2-odroid-c1-development-boards-comparison/

        All in all unless being part of the RPi ecosystem is important to you, I think the C1 will give you better bang for your buck.

        Frankly the sudden release of the RPI2 (didn’t Eben say it will be released in 2016/2017?) probably happened due to two reasons…the emergence of multiple reasonably priced and more powerful RPi clones; specifically the $35 C1, along with the Ubuntu Snappy release…..In the official press release Ubuntu announced that Ubuntu snappy OS would be supporting the C1 and Beaglebone Black with no mention of the RPi (probably due to its ancient ARM v6 architecture).

        I’m glad to see both boards released (don’t care much for the Windows 10 for RPi2 announcement though …what a joke). But I’m more than content with my C1’s.

          1. >Is sound over HDMI supported? Yes.
            >Is there any Analog audio output or input? No. But you can use our USB Audio Adapter.

            There are “HDMI to VGA” dongles from China for $20 or from walmart and “USB sound card” for $5

        1. +1 (get my odroid c1’s today!)
          A benefit of the Odroid C1 that i certainly plan to take advantage of are the two ADC pins. I love my RPi, but not having ADC and expressly being an education tool is kind of an oversight that i had hoped the version 2 would overcome.
          Sure you can interface I2C, and SPI – ADCs, as well as scoping up to a nice NI usb ADC, but this the thing is supposed to be out of box experimentation. Hook a cds up to it and measure light, “you know, for kids” –( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G5F8ObYgjI ) .

        2. +1
          After switching to the Odroid world because of the huge lack of performance from the raspberry pi I would agree the Odroid definitely offers more bang for the buck. The pi was great when it first came out but very early on I started to feel the performance was to low. Even a few years ago it was pretty easy to get ahold of an old single core laptop for free or nearly free for a student to play around with. Just the ability to access eMMC storage at 100MB/s plus made all the difference on an Odroid. With an Odroid I could have a chromium tab open to full website browsing for a solution while making corrections to the program on the fly. That is something that I found absolutely painful on the pi. Even this new pi lacks the storage, Ethernet and usb throughput most students would need in order to eliminate needless frustration and the need for a second regular PC to browse for solutions to coding problems.

    1. What childishness? Making and selling devices pretty much at cost so children have an opportunity to learn how computers and electronics work, and at the same time being extremely supportive of the maker community at large who took the Pi and did things the Foundation never expected?

      The only thing childish seems to be your closed-minded attitude.

    1. I can see why, if peeps want a recent versions of Android or Windows 10 on the device. The CPU was a problem from the start (even for linux distributions) due to the old arm architecture. A7 is okay (slightly worse than a nokia 735), We’ll probably see a 64 bit version by 2017.

      The foundation also said they were going to ship with cases after the first production run. *shrug* with all the best will in the world, things change.

      Still think there is some wiggle room in price, especially now they are getting significant volumes.

      1. “The foundation also said they were going to ship with cases after the first production run.”

        Tell us more about the difficulties you’re having with finding a case for your raspberry pi

    2. Sounded to me like the comment back in July 2014 was considering a whole new dev effort, a complete board redesign. What we got wasn’t a redesign, but a board evolution (which isn’t a bad thing either). From what I see, it could have been called the Model C. But then, what was stopping them from naming it RPi 2? Nothing.

      At least it’s not as bad as the numbering system for Firefox, which is now up to 35.0.x just so somebody can say it’s nearly 3.5 times better than IE11.

  3. Could use some clarifications for this. I see it differently as you don’t have to rely on or wait for Broadcom to sell you their CPU+RAM.
    >Sixteen gigabit RAMs do exist, but now that the CPU and RAM aren’t on the same package, there’s more to consider than just plopping down a new RAM chip.

    As long as the memory controller supports the higher density and the design has the foresight to wire things correctly per JEDEC pinout. The rest is just a matter of getting the bootloader (u-boot?) to initialize the RAM.

    1. Banana PI has both of those. I bought one BPI just to serve as a NAS, but have not yet tested it. It is nice that nowadays the PI and its clones have their hardware support in mainline kernels, so one does not need to pull the code from untrusted sources. Of course, one still needs to trust that the device’s boot firmware itself is reliable.

  4. It’s only a quad ARMv7 at 900 MHz, no USB3, no 1Gbit/s LAN, no eMMC.
    But it has I2S, analog audio/video and a low power consumption, which lacks on my odroid C1.
    On the other side the RPI2 seem’s way more open source than the C1 (stuck on linux kernel 3.10 because of bin blips).

    I’m not too much deceived about my C1, at least, it run’s at 4x 1.5GHz.

    1. ok cool, thx for quick response guys.
      I just ordered a few from farnell, element 14, but they don’t seem to be in stock at the moment.
      Will reply to this post as soon as i get them.

    1. I don’t get it. Did someone ask a redundant question? Scanning the comments, the only thing that jumps out at me is someone asking about the price. The price isn’t in the article, just the TL;DR. If that was added later then it’s [Brian]’s fault for omitting it the first time.

      Regardless of whether that’s the case, why is [Brian] chiding the *entire* HAD readership for having to provide essential details in a concise format – which is what he should be doing anyway? Especially with statements like this following it:

      ‘It’s here, now, and the biggest change is a faster quad-core chip, a better processor architecture, and 1GB of RAM.”

      If that’s the biggest change, then that means there’s others, right? It then takes at least the next few paragraphs, if not the entire article, to determine that… oops, [Brian] has misled us, nothing else has changed. If you want to split hairs, there’s slightly different components and placement on the PCB, plus support for fancier OSes, but that minor stuff that can easily be inferred by the quoted sentence.

      Sheesh. I’ve been trying to be more tolerant of editorial mistakes, but if [Brian]’s going to start articles with insults to cover his own faults…

    1. yes we all remember how well it works out when microsoft ports windows to a new device

      let’s remember the port to MIPS
      the port to ALPHA

      how well are those architectures doing today?

      when microsoft ports windows to your chip, it’s the mark of death

    1. It’ll probably have similar limitation as the previous RPi as the MIPI connector for the camera is the same.

      http://www.petervis.com/Raspberry_PI/Raspberry_Pi_CSI/Raspberry_Pi_CSI_Camera_Module.html
      >The two data lanes on the CSI-2 bus provide a theoretical 2 Gbps bandwidth, which approximates to around 5 MP resolution. Therefore, this is what I would expect the new cameras to have. It is very likely to have a maximum video recording resolution of 1920 pixels × 1080 pixels at around 30 frames per second.

    2. I was about to workout why it would not work, but was pleasantly surprised that at least in theory it could work maybe(tm), with a bit of spare headroom.

      Full HD @ 30 fps encoded/compressed is about 2.1MiB/sec so 4K (@ 30fps) would be 4 times this at about 8.5MiB/sec. You could fit about 4 hours at this rate on a 128GB SDXC microSD card or you could stream it off the RPi though the 10/100 NIC to a remote storage system. If it was at 24fps it should be about 25% less, so 5 hours on a 128GB microSD or 6.8MiB/sec to stream.

      I have no idea if the RPi CSI bus can stream data at this high a rate for encoding to the ISP (Image Sensor Pipeline) in the VideoCore IV, I did find one mention of 150-160Mpixels/second on a Google cache of the Raspberry Pi forums ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=56503 – they are down at the moment, I wonder why). But 150Mpixels per second at 8.3Megapixels would be 18 fps. So maybe it is not possible or maybe this new BCM2836 chip has a CSI-2 bus in it working in a backward compatible mode.

    3. Camera module would just be RAW data coming the sensor, so still limited by the CSI-2 bus speed as stated previously. Even then, it is a theoretical limit. The actual chip implementation would be lower than that, but we don’t know without signing a NDA.

  5. It is a shame that a non-for-profit foundation let its supporters down by releasing a new version that they themselves said it wouldn’t be released till sometime later. This’s is disappointing for those who have just bought a b+. If $35 is nothing for you, it is still too much for others.

    1. You should probably warn others about the kill switch in the Raspberry Pi hardware. I can’t believe they made your B+ stop working when they released the new version. Maybe it’s in the firmware and we can get patched version without the kill switch.

    2. I can see how a lot of people could be bummed out, I know I would have been. I even thought about picking up a B+ the second I heard about it but it really didn’t offer any significant improvements. I realize significance is in the eye of the beholder but I’d already dealt with the limited GPIO on the original PiB by learning the basics of i2c. Which significantly reduced my pin dependance. Add to that the fact that the B+ and apparently the 2 still have the Ethernet situated on the USB bus, which for me is a total deal breaker.

  6. at $35.00 you can’t really complain about anything given the specs..

    I’d imagine there are a lot of resources wasted on running full OS, but again $35.00 for a quad core ARM SBC..

    1. That’s what blows my mind. Forget the Microsoft bashing, people are bashing this because it’s, what? An affordable quad core board? Better than the B+ was for the same price? Actually available now as opposed to the chronically out of stock boards from competitors?

      I swear, some people just complain because they have nothing better to do. Wouldn’t that energy be better spent playing with whatever non-RPi gadget they feel is so superior?

  7. Brian,

    The official Raspbian image from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is for both the original Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi 2. It contains kernels for both devices kernel.img (for ARMv6) and kernel7.img (for ARMv7).

    That explains why your new card was able to be booted on the original Pi.

    As for why the copy on the website didn’t boot on the Pi 2, I’d try the official image with the latest firmware. But otherwise it should have worked.

    There is no mystery here.

    https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware

  8. I’m using my Pi 1 Model B as a webserver; I’m also using a SanDisk 32GB SDHC Extreme Pro card.

    The websites have mainly graphics (architects and photographers) and I would like to speed them up using a Raspberry Pi 2.

    Will a Raspberry Pi 2 boot with the Pi 1’s Model B Raspbian image?

    Thanks, Luís

  9. “You’re not a child and you should learn to read”

    Annd you’ve lost me. There have been some questionable choices around here from time to time, but directly insulting your readers? What the hell guys?

  10. Hi,

    I am new to this, so please dont mind if my question looks naive to you.

    I was looking for a low cost board to which I would like to port WEC7 (win CE..new name). Now lets say I get this board, then my question is can I do that?

    And if yes then how can I do that?

  11. Oh look, the rumors are true about the foundation releasing a newer faster model because the source for the original chip has dried up.
    Have they reworked *anything* else to get around the previous design flaws while things were being changed? no. Because its not a redesign by choice, its forced because of supplies of the original components getting hard to source

  12. The BeagleBone Black is still $55 and has a single core Cortex-A8 and only 512 MB RAM.

    I just hope that these guys push their next design quickly to production as it seems that the Pi will (psychologically) attract more users now that it’s a quad core and has 1 GB of RAM.

  13. Hi I’m tottaly new to your world of Geek. I want to immigrate there soon and would like to be a citizne of Odrpid or the pi2. My main reasons for this is to decode the matrix inside and speak your languagse and build a htpc for all my homies to be streaming live tv oh baby live! live! bye cable bay!

    Which ones good for openelec live tv streamin! Pi2 or Odriod?

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