Raspberry Pi 2 released. PropellerIDE faster on ARM.
Heater.
Posts: 21,230
Big shock this morning. A new Raspberry Pi is released.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/02/raspberry_pi_model_2/
arm7, 4 cores, 900MHz and 1GB RAM.
Also runs Windows 10 !
Same old price.
Am I dreaming this? Is it the first day of April?
RaspberryPI is down and has been for ages this morning.
This should run all the new open source Propeller dev tools very nicely?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/02/raspberry_pi_model_2/
arm7, 4 cores, 900MHz and 1GB RAM.
Also runs Windows 10 !
Same old price.
Am I dreaming this? Is it the first day of April?
RaspberryPI is down and has been for ages this morning.
This should run all the new open source Propeller dev tools very nicely?
Comments
"For the last six months weve been working closely with Microsoft to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2. Microsoft will have much more to share over the coming months. The Raspberry Pi 2-compatible version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers."
This will beat those cheap routers we were playing with.
Where did you read it will run Windows 10? If true, maybe Intel should be worried.
Shame there is no inbuilt wifi but for a few $ you can add a USB Wifi.
Just need a fast SSD or HDD and a case for a miniature PC for a smaller Mac Mini footprint.
(Shame I can't say that about the P2)
Windows 10 is definitely on the list. My whole world model has been given a whack this morning.
For making a miniature PC I don't think fast storage will help, drive access still has to go through the USB chip which I think is a bottleneck compared to other ARM boards with SATA interfaces. Still, it will be a plenty fast enough PC for me. Building prop-gcc should be down to 4 or 6 hours instead of 24 ! Not that the Pi was ever intended as a PC replacement.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/index.php
I didn't have any trouble accessing it.
It's available from RS Components. I've ordered one and should get it tomorrow.
Seems they have been shipping these already to people who order the B+. So perhaps we don't have to wait an age to get one.
I just ordered some B+'s last week. I got B+'s
They needed to put in a SATA interface like Banana Pi has. That would nicely solve the disk I/O issue.
...and it runs Win X, that should make for a cracking quick system!! ;o)
Tried to buy via the web links listed on the site, but they're UK only. Now, how to buy from Japan..
-Tor
Of course most of us have no need for such legacy operating systems on an embedded system.
What's MS up to? They seem to have put some effort into this.
For sure the prospect of millions of young people hacking on Raspi's with no Windows in sight must be a worry for MS so they have to get Windows in front of the kids faces.
But that is just the old "give computers with our OS" to schools trick as played by MS and Apple for ages.
But there must be more to it. Today they have to give there OS away for free to get anyone to use it. Especially so since the price of the hardware is approaching zero.
Then there is the IoT angle, notice how you have to sign up for the "Windows Developer Program for IoT". What is that? Seems we are not going to get simple internet connected light bulbs, no our light bulbs are going to run Windows!
Sorry could not resist!
Ray
Great news indeed if you need a little more power than your P1 but are still patiently waiting for the mythical P2.
Who'd have thought back in 2012 when I made this post that the Raspberry Pi 2 would be released before P2, now just let that sink in.......
Here's hoping Chip and Parallax can deliver the P2 before the world inevitably moves on......
I think it's more for the Windows store, they are hoping people will pay for IoT apps, Microsoft's answer to Apple's iTunes?
No, I think Heater is spot on - millions of RPIs have been sold, and a lot of that to schools and young people. MS wants to be there, it was always very important (and that's why Apple and MS both have focused on schools. Teach somebody to use some particular tool and they become used to it, and then that's what they'll be using (and paying for) later in life and work.
-Tor
Coley,
I guess MS put together this IoT thing to support Intel's tiny new boards the Galileo. Seems it's flush with Arduino IDE and Processing to attract the Maker movement. Too expensive of course and I suspect not selling well. So I guess it's a no brainer to want to exploit the Pi user base if possible.
I'm sure there is an expectation to shift phone apps and the inevitable lock in to app store and IoT cloud services.
Leverage to get the RasPi education programs into schools in the US and get past district administrators that don't consider anything a computer unless it says Windows or Apple and don't consider anything a valid robot unless it is Lego. Beyond that, not much.
As the old saying went, "Nobody ever got fired for recommending IBM"
The Pi has sold what, over 4 million units, more than any ones wildest dreams when they started out. They seem to be getting into schools around the world just fine.
I'm guessing the only platform MS had for its IoT dev program was Intel's Galileo. Anyone know the size Galileo of the user base? I bet it's a drop in the ocean by comparison.
It will be interesting to see how this fares in the Pi community and if it does attract any users that would otherwise not bother.
Schools around the world are probably easier to get into than any large school districts in the US. Remember what Ken was going through with programming a Propeller from an iPad just because of the Apple mandate. Chromebooks have recently become popular, so now you can pick Apple, Windows or Chromebook.
Me for one, and I suspect, many others.
Not every one enjoys command line bashing...
Dave
dgately
Folks, don't expect to run desktop-class Windows on this. That hasn't been confirmed: What were talking about here is Windows 10 for IoT [Internet of Things]; there hasnt been a statement about capabilities, [Raspberry Pi CEO] Upton explains. Were not necessarily talking about PowerPoint or the Windows desktop. Microsoft will make a statement on what exact capabilities they plan to bring to the device fairly soon.
Article: Windows 10 is coming to the Raspberry Pi 2 for free
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/02/windows-10-is-coming-to-the-raspberry-pi-2/
Also, about the 6X speed improvement, I read somewhere that it's more like a 1.5X speedup for many single-core apps, so I wouldn't count on any build times dropping dramatically.
Ray
I've been running SimpleIDE & PropellerIDE on a pcDuino3 which has an A7 dual-core All-Winner ARM chip, 1GB of RAM and runs the apps very quickly. Actually, I just download the RPi versions of the apps to the pcDuino3 and they run. Even without specific optimization, the apps run much more like on a Mac or PC and are quite useable!
So, I imagine the apps will run directly on the Pi 2, very quickly and even more quickly if re-built with multi-core optimizations!
dgately
http://www.cnet.com/news/top-10-biggest-drawbacks-of-windows-rt/
I'm looking forward to trying these out for regular, day to day work.
The improvements in OpenCV are supposed to be impressive. The performance for other tasks seems to vary with workload mix as with anything else. Four cores can't hurt!'
Doesn't the build process have a flag to tell it to use multiple cores? I thought there was discussion on that in earlier threads.
What about odriod, pi alike, but 1.5Ghz quad core CPUs
I've used the HP Stream 7 a little, and have been quite impressed.
There, MS did a 32 bit version of Win 8.1 which (to them) protects their 64bit desktop, but to embedded developer users is actually a serious benefit, as it (so far) runs all that old, legacy 32b code just fine.
One product I assist with, has already made minor changes to run better on S7.
I'm not sure I'd use it for full time development of course, but sometimes you want "a Debug on each end" and lack room for a full 2nd Desktop.
Field updates got a lot smaller... Good for students...
The list goes on.
Windows 10 on Pi should expand that, and allow developers quicker access to a LOT more software.
Very interesting move.
I love a GUI as much as the next guy. When there are those things that you do over and over again day by day, give me an icon or button or menu option to click on and do it.
But, when you are developing programs you are essentially writing text. So it's not such a big step that when you are building, configuring and generally customising things how you like text is the way to go. A command line.
The whole reason for being of the Raspberry Pi is to introduce the young generation to programming, command lines and all. A skill that has been lost during the dark ages of Windows point and click and games consoles.
Ergo, Windows on the Pi is the total antithesis of the whole reason for the Pi existing.
I love my KDE desktop on Linux. Mostly because I love the Konsole that gets me to the command line as quickly and nicely as possible. The other icons on my desktop get me to the Chrome or Firefox browser in short order. Or perhaps my Sublime Text editor for source hacking.
Do we need Windows to do that? No, we have all the GUIness we need already. (No not Guinness
@JRetSapDoog, Yep, that is why Windows RT on ARM failed. It's kind of Windows but there is nothing to run on it.
99% of Windows stuff will not run on the PI 2. At least you cannot expect any of your non-MS apps to do so unless their vendors rebuild them for ARM.
I'm curious as to whether IE comes along for the ride. I'm pinning for webgl to work on a Pi browser.
Certainly normal single threaded apps are not going to see any speed up. A 900Mz clock over the old 700Mhz will be hardly noticeable.
Build times could well drop though because make knows how to parallelize the task over multiple cores. But the bottleneck is storage access speed I think.
My apps can at least use 3 or 4 parallel processes so perhaps I see some big gains there as those processes are spread over cores.
@Rsadeika,
As far as I can tell SimpleIDE for the PI will run on the PI 2 out of the box.
Do not expect any "lightning fast" stuff though. SimpleIDE is a single threaded app which will run on a single core. 900Mhz instead of 700HMz.
@frida, I'm sure it's quite fine. If you know how to drive it go for it.
The point of the Pi 2 is that is 100% compatible with the work of 4 million people out there and those thousands of instructions and tutorials on thousands of blogs will still work.
Change to odroid or whatever and you are on your own. Or hopefully they also have a big user community to tap into for help.
@jmg,
I did not understand what you said at all.
How is what happened on 64 or 32 bit Intel based tabs and laptops relevant to what happens on the little ARM board?
For sure some vendors might take the trouble to tap into this market by building ARM versions of their apps. I'm not expecting much of that to happen. What list ? No, not unless those software vendors rebuild their apps for the ARM processor an Pi in particular. Which as I said I don't see happening any time soon.
Besides, I will suggest that there is a LOT MORE useful software for the Pi in the world of Open Source. Yes indeed. I would not trust them further than I can throw them. Stay away.
And the RAM
I, for one, am thrilled to see the announcement of Pi2. A modern day CPU with dedicated graphics and cheap price. The best of all the SBCs that I've seen!
As for Windows - I think it's great, but only because it's free. Only time will tell if the Windows-on-Pi's full potential is realized.