I was invited to the offices of element14, one of the channel partners of Raspberry Pi, to attend the launch of the Raspberry Pi 2 in Bangalore. Along with other members of the tech press, we had a session with the element14 team headed by Mr. Ravi Pagar, Regional Director – India and ASEAN, and also had an opportunity to have a hands on experience with the device.
The Raspberry Pi 2
Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized computer, was created by the Raspberry Pi foundation and was intended to encourage schoolchildren and young adults to program. The original Raspberry Pi launched on 29th February, 2012 and was hugely successful. According to founder Eben Upton, sales of the Raspberry Pi have exceed 4.5 million units since launch, far surpassing the initial expectations and it has found widespread use, extending to areas like home automation and even industrial applications.
Now, 35 months later, the Raspberry Pi 2 has been launched, much ahead of the initially planned 2017 target. While it is a huge improvement over the B+, even more impressive is the fact that it still maintains the same $35 price point. SoC partner Broadcom created a new SoC, the BCM2836, specifically for the Raspberry Pi 2, a testament to how successful the original was. Developing a custom SoC entails a sizeable investment so Broadcom must be confident in the sales potential to justify it. The headline upgrades are as follows:-
10/100 Ethernet port and 4 USB 2.0 Ports
The new board is called the Pi 2 Model B (there is no Model A at the moment) has the same form factor as the original Pi B+. Apart from the change to the CPU, the SoC is almost identical. This was done for compatibility reasons so that any software developed for the original Pi (with a few exceptions) will run on the Pi 2. One of the reasons for the success of the Pi was the community support and software developed for it, and the Pi 2 builds on this. The RAM is now placed on the under-side of the PCB and is no longer PoP (Package-on-Package). The Raspberry Pi Model A+ and B/B+ will continue to be sold alongside the Pi 2 to cater to the needs of existing customers.
The biggest change is the CPU. The original Pi had a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC with a single 700 Mhz ARM11 processor, which runs on the ARMv6 instruction set. The Pi 2 with its Cortex A7 cores runs on the ARMv7 instruction set and adds support for other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and a surprise in the form of Windows 10 support. The Raspberry Pi foundation has been working with Microsoft over the last six months and a Raspberry Pi 2 compatible version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers. It will certainly be a challenge to run Windows 10 with the limited CPU and GPU power available, but the very fact that it is supported is still quite an achievement.
1 GB LPDDR2 from ELPIDA
The CPU performance about 6x faster in a typical multi-core benchmark like Sysmark. Single-core performance is up by at least 1.5x, Sunspider around 4x (though it should be noted that Sunspider results are also heavily software dependent), and NEON-enabled multi-core video codecs can be over 20x faster. The doubled RAM at 1 GB will enable even bigger and more powerful projects. Regarding power consumption, as per Eben Upton, the idle power is the same as the Pi B+ while the load power consumption is higher than the B+ due to the additional cores. He mentioned that with the B+, they managed to reduce load power by about 1 watt compared to the B and Pi 2 is back to around that level. The increase in load power consumption is expected thanks to the additional cores but I was expecting the idle power to be down thanks to the move to Cortex A7 and presumably being fabrication on a 28nm process. I am still waiting for confirmation of this however.
Edit: I have been informed that the SoC is fabricated on 40nm and this explains the power numbers and also the low 900 mhz clock speed. This is a bit surprising as 28nm is the cheapest process today in terms of per transistor cost and this should only improve as wafer prices are trending down. Given that the product will be sold for a number of years..it is a bit surprising that they stuck to 40nm. Perhaps the idea was to minimize the design costs but it would have more than been made up in the long run. 28nm would also have allowed lower power and/or higher clocks.
Though the Pi 2 is a big upgrade compared to the B+, it misses out on certain features such as WiFi, onboard NAND and Gigabit Ethernet, that some of its competitors like the ODROID C1 and the IMG Creator CI20 sport (Wifi is available as an add-on though). However, cost engineering was a major challenge for the Pi 2 and given the $35 price point, some compromises had to be made. Another feature which would be useful in this day and age is HEVC (H.265) video decode support. Hopefully we will see some of these features implemented in a future model.
The Raspberry Pi 2 is available in India, starting today, through element14 and is priced at Rs. 2900/- exclusive of taxes. Element14 also sells a number of accessories specifically designed and manufactured to expand the usability of the Raspberry Pi.
Complete specifications and other details are available at the web page of the Raspberry Pi Foundation
The Raspberry Pi 2
Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized computer, was created by the Raspberry Pi foundation and was intended to encourage schoolchildren and young adults to program. The original Raspberry Pi launched on 29th February, 2012 and was hugely successful. According to founder Eben Upton, sales of the Raspberry Pi have exceed 4.5 million units since launch, far surpassing the initial expectations and it has found widespread use, extending to areas like home automation and even industrial applications.
Now, 35 months later, the Raspberry Pi 2 has been launched, much ahead of the initially planned 2017 target. While it is a huge improvement over the B+, even more impressive is the fact that it still maintains the same $35 price point. SoC partner Broadcom created a new SoC, the BCM2836, specifically for the Raspberry Pi 2, a testament to how successful the original was. Developing a custom SoC entails a sizeable investment so Broadcom must be confident in the sales potential to justify it. The headline upgrades are as follows:-
- Quad core ARM Cortex A7 at 900 Mhz
- 1 GB LPDDR2 RAM
40 Pin GPIO Connector
The biggest change is the CPU. The original Pi had a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC with a single 700 Mhz ARM11 processor, which runs on the ARMv6 instruction set. The Pi 2 with its Cortex A7 cores runs on the ARMv7 instruction set and adds support for other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and a surprise in the form of Windows 10 support. The Raspberry Pi foundation has been working with Microsoft over the last six months and a Raspberry Pi 2 compatible version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers. It will certainly be a challenge to run Windows 10 with the limited CPU and GPU power available, but the very fact that it is supported is still quite an achievement.
The CPU performance about 6x faster in a typical multi-core benchmark like Sysmark. Single-core performance is up by at least 1.5x, Sunspider around 4x (though it should be noted that Sunspider results are also heavily software dependent), and NEON-enabled multi-core video codecs can be over 20x faster. The doubled RAM at 1 GB will enable even bigger and more powerful projects. Regarding power consumption, as per Eben Upton, the idle power is the same as the Pi B+ while the load power consumption is higher than the B+ due to the additional cores. He mentioned that with the B+, they managed to reduce load power by about 1 watt compared to the B and Pi 2 is back to around that level. The increase in load power consumption is expected thanks to the additional cores but I was expecting the idle power to be down thanks to the move to Cortex A7 and presumably being fabrication on a 28nm process. I am still waiting for confirmation of this however.
Edit: I have been informed that the SoC is fabricated on 40nm and this explains the power numbers and also the low 900 mhz clock speed. This is a bit surprising as 28nm is the cheapest process today in terms of per transistor cost and this should only improve as wafer prices are trending down. Given that the product will be sold for a number of years..it is a bit surprising that they stuck to 40nm. Perhaps the idea was to minimize the design costs but it would have more than been made up in the long run. 28nm would also have allowed lower power and/or higher clocks.
Close up of the BCM2836 SoC
Though the Pi 2 is a big upgrade compared to the B+, it misses out on certain features such as WiFi, onboard NAND and Gigabit Ethernet, that some of its competitors like the ODROID C1 and the IMG Creator CI20 sport (Wifi is available as an add-on though). However, cost engineering was a major challenge for the Pi 2 and given the $35 price point, some compromises had to be made. Another feature which would be useful in this day and age is HEVC (H.265) video decode support. Hopefully we will see some of these features implemented in a future model.
The Raspberry Pi 2 is available in India, starting today, through element14 and is priced at Rs. 2900/- exclusive of taxes. Element14 also sells a number of accessories specifically designed and manufactured to expand the usability of the Raspberry Pi.
Complete specifications and other details are available at the web page of the Raspberry Pi Foundation
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his need for a gigabit port is justified 