The Raspberry Pi Foundation is likely to provoke a global geekgasm today with the surprise release of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B: a turbocharged version of the B+ boasting a new Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core system-on-chip with 1GB of RAM – all of which will drive performance “at least 6x” that of the B+.
At its heart, though, is the BCM2836 SoC, which according to Upton has been in development for a couple of years. It’s “very, very similar” to its predecessor – the BCM2835 – but with four cores and “a little tweak to allow us to address the gig of RAM”
The BCM2835, as used in previous Pis, is a Broadcom GPU – the VideoCore IV – with a single 700MHz ARM1176JZF-S application core glued in to run software. The system-on-chip is shipped with 256MB or 512MB of RAM stacked on top.
The new BCM2836, on the other hand, contains four ARMv7 Cortex-A7 cores with 1GB of RAM.
The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is the latest version of the Raspberry Pi, a tiny credit card size computer. Just add a keyboard, mouse, display,power supply, micro SD card with installed Linux Distribution and you’ll have a fully fledged computer that can run applications from word processors and spreadsheets to games.
What’s the same:
- Same form factor as the model B+ (your enclosures and daughter boards should still fit).
- Same full size HDMI port
- Same 10/100 Ethernet port
- Same CSI camera port and DSI display ports
- Same micro USB power supply connection
What has changed:
- A new turbocharged Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core system-on-chip with performance at least 6x that of the B+.
- 1GB of RAM