14 DAY TRIAL // Raspberry Pi 2 is a new mini PC from the Raspberry Pi Foundation that follows in the footsteps on the previous devices, which has managed to take the world by storm.
The first edition of Raspberry Pi arrived back in February 2012, and very few users haven't hear about it. It's a platform that was initially built for development and to help kids learn programming more easily, but the number of uses that people found for it defied all expectations. It was cheap, $35 (€31), and it was able to run multiple operating systems, most of them based on Linux.
Now a new version has been released, and unsurprisingly, it's called Raspberry Pi 2. The name is less important, but the fact that it sports a quad-core ARM processor is much more important. It opens up a wealth of opportunities, much more than the previous one. The fact that the price has remained the same is also a good indication that it's going to be at least as successful as the other ones.
Raspberry Pi 2 hardware specs
As you can imagine, there has been quite a lot of competition on this market and numerous other similar devices have been put forth. Some of those had better hardware specs than Raspberry Pi, but they didn't quite made it. They mostly lacked the necessary support from third party distros and apps.
Raspberry Pi 2 comes with a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (Broadcom BCM2836), which is said to be six times faster than the previous one, 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM, a VideoCore IV dual-core GPU, 1080p video output, 4 USB 2.0 sockets, a 40-pin header for GPIO and serial buses, and much more.
"There comes a point when there's no substitute for more memory and CPU performance. Fortunately for us, Broadcom were willing to step up with a new SoC, BCM2836. This retains all the features of BCM2835, but replaces the single 700MHz ARM11 with a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 complex: everything else remains the same, so there is no painful transition or reduction in stability," wrote Eben Upton, the founder and CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
This doesn't mean that you won't be able to still get the first version of Raspberry Pi. This will be available for some time. Also, Model A+, which is an even cheaper version, will continue to ship for the time being. You can head over to the download page for Raspberry Pi 2 and get some of the updated OS images. Also, a Windows 10 version will be available as well.
