Great news for hardware enthusiasts: the Raspberry Pi, by far the most popular platform in the DIY world, has just received a major update. The new Raspberry Pi 2 takes several ideas from the B+ model, but it multiplies the number of cores by four and offers twice as much RAM, without changing its original price.
It has been possible from the beginning to use the Raspberry Pi as a computer, but its hardware specifications demand certain compromises from the user. Even with optimized software, there are tasks that push its SoC to the limit, and at that point no overclocking can save it. Fortunately, the people behind the Raspberry Pi are responding with increasing speed to users' needs. The B+ model received several adjustments, from power consumption to additional USB ports, and a good part of those optimizations were reflected in the economical A+ model. Now it's time to give the specifications another push, and thus the Raspberry Pi 2 was born.
Hardware changes and performance
At first glance, the new Raspberry Pi 2 may look identical to the B+ model (in fact, B+ cases are compatible with the RBPi 2), but a trained eye will quickly spot some differences. First, the memory is now on the other side of the PCB, since it offers 1 GB of RAM instead of 512 MB. Having more memory is always good, but the changes don't end there. The Broadcom BCM2835 SoC is gone, replaced by the brand-new BCM2836 with four physical cores (ARMv7) running at 900 MHz. In theory, these hardware changes make the Raspberry Pi 2 six times faster than its predecessor, although in real-world tests it seems more reasonable to talk about two or three times. Taking Raspbian as a reference, which has already been updated, its boot time dropped to twenty seconds on the new Raspberry, compared to the average of 35 seconds on the B+.
Same price, Windows 10 on the way
If the new model isn't enough to get excited about, there are two more pieces of news. The first is that the Raspberry Pi 2 will keep the same price as the B+ model, and anyone interested can buy it today for $35 (without shipping or taxes, of course). The second piece of news, confirmed by both parties, is the arrival of Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi 2. According to the official site, developers have been working with Microsoft for the last six months to make it possible, and according to Redmond, this special version of Windows 10 will be free for those who sign up for the Windows Development Program focused on the Internet of Things. Personally, I hope Microsoft doesn't repeat on the Raspberry Pi the mistakes it made with Windows RT, and that software compatibility is much broader. The only bad news is that there won't be a "2 A+" variant before the end of the year, so the Raspberry Pi 2 will only have the company of its younger siblings.
