When the Raspberry Pi appeared In 2012 few could have
envisaged how popular the Raspberry Pi would be. In the years after its
release the Raspberry Pi has become the most popular single-board
computer on the market and spawned many imitators, but none with the
rich community that has grown organically around the Raspberry Pi.
The
latest single-board computer from the Raspberry Pi Foundation comes
with the spec boost that we were all hoping for. The Raspberry Pi 2 is
the latest in a long line of products from the Foundation and can run a
number of Linux distros (and even Windows 10).
It really
is a barebone board in every sense -- even to the point where you will
have to find your own micro-USB cable to power it up (a move made to cut
down on costs). All things considered, the Raspberry Pi 2 really is
amazing value at just £25 including VAT ($33, or AUS$45). The Raspberry Pi 2 is exactly the same size as the B+ meaning that finding a case is relatively easySince
the release of the original Raspberry Pi there have been three versions
of the flagship B model, starting at 256MB RAM and increasing to 512MB
with the second B and B+. But in all of these models the system on a
chip (SoC) has remained the trusty BCM2835 with an ARM v11 700Mhz CPU,
the same as the Now TV box. The community has done wonderful things with these resources but now the spec boost that they were waiting for has arrived.
In
early February, the Raspberry Pi 2 arrived and the original ARM11 has
been replaced with a Cortex-A5 CPU running at an improved 800MHz. But
rather than stick with a single core, the Raspberry Pi 2 comes with four
cores which speeds up the Raspberry Pi by as much as six times.
To
go with the new CPU, the amount of RAM has also been upgraded to 1GB.
The rest of the hardware, however, matches that of the B+: a Videocore
GPU, a 40-pin GPIO, four USB 2 ports and 10/100 Ethernet. Physically the
Raspberry Pi 2 also has the same dimensions as the B+. Raspberry Pi 2 ports
Performance and benchmarks
Specifications:
SoC: Broadcom 2836 CPU: Quad-core ARM7 800MHz GPU: Videocore IV 250MHz Memory: 1GB GPIO: 40pin Ports: 4x USB 2.0, 100BaseT Ethernet, HDMI, MicroSD card Size: 85.60 × 56.5mm (about 3.2 x 2.1-inch)
To
show the improvements made to the Raspberry Pi 2, we wanted to run a
few real-world benchmarks to show how powerful the new Pi actually is
when compared to the B+. The first test on our list is booting both Pis
from cold to login prompt.
The B+ managed this is in 33
seconds versus 17 seconds for the Raspberry Pi 2. We then set both Pis
to boot straight to desktop and the B+ managed 42 seconds while the Pi 2
came in at 21 seconds -- half the time of the B+! Once at the desktop
we tested a few common applications. Creating a new world in Minecraft
took 42 seconds on the B+, and 21 seconds on the Pi 2. Loading IDLE 3
took 13 seconds on the B+ and a mere 4 seconds on the Pi 2. Running
SunSpider in the new optimised browser gave a glimpse at real-world
performance. Over the suite of tests there was a 2.5 times boost in
speed. Considering the complexities of multi-threading this sounds like a
reasonable expectation. Even so, individual results showed a near
four-fold increase on this unoptimised code.
The
Raspberry Pi B+ and Pi 2 both come with the same Videocore GPU as before
and in our tests there was a small improvement in FPS (Frames Per
Second) for the Raspberry Pi 2 largely thanks to the increased RAM
present on the board. Our last test was file transfer speeds via
Ethernet, for this we used scp to copy a 692MB Big Buck Bunny video file
to each Pi. On the B+ we saw an average of 3.8MB/s and on the Pi 2 we
saw 4.6MB/s, which is an 0.8MB/s speed increase.
To
discover for ourselves how Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton arrived at his
claim that the Raspberry Pi 2 is six times more powerful than its
predecessor, we ran a Sysbench test on both models. It clocked in at
509.58 on the B+, versus 74.68 on the Raspberry Pi 2 -- a 6.8x
difference in favour of the newer model.
The Raspberry Pi
Foundation have released an updated Raspbian image which includes the
ARMv7 kernel image necessary to use the new CPU. Applications written
for the original Raspberry Pi are fully compatible with the Raspberry Pi
2, though -- building upon the rich projects that have been written
since the initial launch of the Raspberry Pi.
Final verdict
The
Raspberry Pi 2 is less than half the cost of a PS4 or Xbox One game
but, given the time and effort, could provide far more satisfaction in
the long run. Available since December, the new sleek Raspbian desktop
runs well on the B+, but on the Pi 2, it feels like a responsive desktop
that we normally see on our main computers.
The speed
increase provided by the quad-core CPU and 1GB RAM is more than welcome,
and retaining the B+ form factor keeps a strong tie to the many
existing add-ons. It is a powerful platform for hackers and makers and
also a competent solution for a low-cost computer in schools and homes
around the world.
It should be noted that the Raspberry
Pi 2 may prove a little daunting to newcomers -- particularly ones that
have not come across Linux before, but there are plenty of resources out
there to help you on your way. You'll have to grab yourself a micro-USB
cable to get started, but they're fairly ubiquitous and can be had for
next to nothing.
The Raspberry Pi 2 answers a lot of the
requests made by the community and provides a stable and well-supported
platform for hackers, makers and learners to carry on making excellent
projects for many years to come.
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