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News Raspberry Pi 2 launches with quad-core ARMv7 chip

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 2 Feb 2015.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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  2. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Seriously, though: Microsoft isn't bringing Windows 10 to its ARMv7-based Surface RT product line, but it is bringing Windows 10 to the ARMv7-based Raspberry Pi 2? For free? Just goes to show how panicked the company has been by the idea of kids learning computing on Linux...
     
  3. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    Holly sh!t yeah ! I'm glad I've waited a little.
     
  4. andrew8200m

    andrew8200m Multimodder

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    It is a great way to get into programming and im glad that Microsoft and Apple are having their share slowly but surely eaten away by Linux. This added competition through the development of new programming talent is exactly what is needed to push innovation and to hopefully drive costs down whilst expanding compatibility. Its not like there isn't enough money in Microsoft of Apple to be able to do this..
     
  5. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    Build a cheap cluster from them and learn distributed computing.
     
  6. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Or how much a waste of time the Surface RT was.
     
  7. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    Microsoft are trying to keep themselves relevant; the last thing they want is for a new generation of engineers to bring their Linux experience to the enterprise market. It's a bit desperate, but perfectly understandable. As for not giving Surface/SurfaceRT tablets an upgrade when they'll do it for the Raspberry Pi 2: lol. marketing. :)

    Microsoft aside, my flabber was indeed gasted when I first heard about this. I've got one on the way from RS already (along with an A+ so that I can hopefully kick off a project that's been on the back-burner for so long that it burnt to a crisp years ago).

    Some may reckon that this is a long overdue upgrade, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation isn't quite as small a project as it once was. Back when the original Pi launched Broadcom were basically doing them a massive favour by giving them access to the BCM2835 in such low quantities - companies like Broadcom don't tend to give you the time of day unless you're committing to an order of several tens of thousands of units. Now however they're able to negotiate with Broadcom as a fairly major customer. There couldn't have been a much more powerful Pi 2 if it wasn't for the massive success of the Pi.

    Really looking forward to putting this board through its paces.
     
  8. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    The latter half of your sentence is broadly true, but you've got the first half backwards. The Raspberry Pi Foundation was doing *Broadcom* a favour when the original launched, as people had long stopped buying the BCM2835 ('cos it's as slow as a very slow thing) and Broadcom had a warehouse full of the piggin' things. Then, when the Raspberry Pi was a success, Broadcom began making more BCM2835's - just for the Pi. Now, the BCM2836 is a chip specifically made for the Raspberry Pi 2; it exists purely to provide a compatible upgrade path for the Foundation.

    Remember: Eben Upton's day job is as a chip architect at Broadcom; he's the chief executive of Raspberry Pi Trading on the side.
     
  9. meandmymouth

    meandmymouth Multimodder

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    I have slowly been gathering parts to do this but I haven't started buying the pi's so I'm chuffed to bits at the release. Now I'll have a 16-20 core cluster across 4-5 nodes, instead of just 4-5 cores. No extra cost either.
     
  10. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    True enough, but the fact that Eben (and others) also worked for Broadcom was probably the leverage they needed in order to get access to that unused stockpile. Especially considering they weren't even sure whether they were going to sell even 10,000 units to start with. It's hard to imagine Broadcom giving A. N. Other access to that backlog of unsold components when the maximum number of units that they might possibly sell is only 10,000.
     
  11. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Again, you're thinking backwards. It was less "can I have those chips, please, Broadcom" and more "hey, Eben, can you find a use for this warehouse full of crap the accounts department is getting antsy about?"
     
  12. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    ....In which case the fact that Eben works for Broadcom gave them an advantage that no one else would have had. So my point still (sort of) stands - we just quibble over semantics :D
     
  13. Votick

    Votick My CPU's hot but my core runs cold.

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    That's when he's in the office. It's only taken me 4 weeks to replace his Blackberry and get the darn thing back :) - Nice guy tho. :thumb:

    Most of the Rasp chip design is now done is Bristol rather than Cambridge although a few of the team are still here including the FGPA guys for the team.
     
  14. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Isn't that what the forum is for? :p
     
  15. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    I think the problem is MS sells Windows RT as Windows, yet it doesn't work with [traditional/x86] Windows software even though it looks, acts, and is called "Windows". So people bought it thinking they could install their normal programs and games only to find it won't run. However, RT isn't going to get anywhere until they get enough people willing to develop for it. Due to the immense popularity of the Pi, this is a great opportunity for MS to get a huge userbase to help refine RT and make it a worth-while OS. I still think people will choose linux though, since it will perform better, have more apps, and will have better support.


    Anyway, I see this product as a response to the ODROID-C1. That's a pretty tough competitor.
     
  16. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Somewhat related - Gareth, did you get to play with the free [to devs] 'Internet of Things' version of Windows they released for the Intel Galileo?
     
  17. Xlog

    Xlog Minimodder

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    Not bad, still needs proper Ethernet or USB3, or ,at least, dedicated USB2 line for it.
     
  18. Votick

    Votick My CPU's hot but my core runs cold.

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    http://blog.broadcom.com/raspberry-...ands-on-a-raspberry-pi-2-hat-tip-to-broadcom/
     
  19. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Sadly not. I signed up to the "we'll give you a free Galileo v2" programme, but wasn't selected. I do have an original Galileo, but I blew it up: turns out that I'd put it away with a 12V PSU instead of its 5V PSU when I reviewed it, so the next time I got it out and plugged it in it got very warm. Annoying, that, and doubly so when the new Galileo v2 is happy with voltage input up to 18V so would have been absolutely fine!

    If anyone cares, I've been doing a bit of benchmarking this afternoon, comparing the Raspberry Pi 2 to the Model B+ at stock and a clockspeed-matched 900MHz.
    SysBench results.
    PigZ results.
    Power draw.
    Bunch of photos.
     
  20. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    The Pi was always intended to be a cheap but functional widget for kids to learn to code on... The fact geeky types who love to thinker with something jumped on it and bought boatloads of them is more of a nice side-effect for them... Adding Faster Ethernet, USB3 and/or other feature creep to please the geeky types would [imo unecessarily] bump the price up and stop it being the cheap kiddie-code widget it was intended to be.

    That's a shame, I imagined the 'free' pi version being somewhat similar to the version they had for the Galileo but not having seen/used the cut-sown Galileo version I wasn't sure what windows features it had [or didn't have]...
     
    Last edited: 2 Feb 2015

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