Author Topic: Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Released Today (Read 15326 times)

nidlaX · « **on:** February 02, 2015, 12:08:01 pm »

Official Announcement

US MCM
-10% off with code BCKTEN
-7.5% cashback from many cashback sites

UK Farnell/CPC

Specs:
-900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (~6x performance of Pi1)
-1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (2x memory of Pi1)
-Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1
-Same form factor as Pi1 B+

This one is looking good with backward compatibility with Pi1 accessories and forward compatibility with Windows 10.

Monkeh · « **Reply #1 on:** February 02, 2015, 01:15:50 pm »

Same crappy design, faster CPU.

coppice · « **Reply #2 on:** February 02, 2015, 03:17:22 pm »

It might not be the greatest design, but they fixed by far its biggest drawback - an instruction set that was out of line with the rest of the industry. Now they have an ARMv7 instruction set core they can run the same software practically every other ARM board runs.

Monkeh · « **Reply #3 on:** February 02, 2015, 03:48:34 pm »

Quote from: coppice on February 02, 2015, 03:17:22 pm

It might not be the greatest design, but they fixed by far its biggest drawback - an instruction set that was out of line with the rest of the industry. Now they have an ARMv7 instruction set core they can run the same software practically every other ARM board runs.

If only they'd provide a real NIC to use, it might not be such a total pile of crap.

Monkeh · « **Reply #4 on:** February 02, 2015, 04:29:54 pm »

Quote from: mojo-chan on February 02, 2015, 04:24:32 pm

It's a £25 SBC with excellent community support. What do you need a "good" NIC for, trying to build a USB NAS?

No, just something which doesn't munch CPU just to send a few packets down a wire.

It's a crap design. A bit more CPU doesn't fix it. There are, quite simply, better options. But the Raspi got the early media hype, so it gets all the attention.

coppice · « **Reply #5 on:** February 02, 2015, 04:33:58 pm »

Quote from: Monkeh on February 02, 2015, 03:48:34 pm

If only they'd provide a real NIC to use, it might not be such a total pile of crap.

THE NIC isn't the real problem. Its the buggy USB controller. If they have fixed that, which I hope would be the case in a new chip, the NIC might seem perfectly reasonable. That nasty USB controller slows everything down.

andersm · « **Reply #6 on:** February 02, 2015, 09:46:50 pm »

It fixes the most important issues with the original version, just in time for people to start asking for a 64-bit CPU.

DaGlitch · « **Reply #7 on:** February 02, 2015, 10:30:14 pm »

Will be interesting to see how this stacks up with the Odroid C1.

ttt · « **Reply #8 on:** February 03, 2015, 12:50:48 am »

Quote from: Monkeh on February 02, 2015, 01:15:50 pm

Same crappy design, faster CPU.

Anyone knows where to get a proper datasheet for the Broadcom BCM2836?

Amlogic got wise and released a datasheet of their S805 (in anticipation of the Pi2?): http://dn.odroid.com/S805/Datasheet/S805_Datasheet%20V0.8%2020150126.pdf

What grinds my wheel is that these designs (Pi2 and Odroid C1) still only have very limited applications outside of simple media stuff given you need to drive GPIOs from Linux (RT or not, same issue). To do something more 'advanced' IO wise you'll need an external FPGA/MCU and limit yourself to an extremely slow data path coming out of the main board.

No competition for BeagleBone (Black) and Intel Edison v2 at this time. Yes, I realize they cost much more.

Monkeh · « **Reply #9 on:** February 03, 2015, 01:20:21 am »

Quote from: ttt on February 03, 2015, 12:50:48 am

Quote from: Monkeh on February 02, 2015, 01:15:50 pm
Same crappy design, faster CPU.

Anyone knows where to get a proper datasheet for the Broadcom BCM2836?

In Broadcom's locked vault, under armed guard by lawyers with stacks of NDA paperwork as their weapons.

Stonent · « **Reply #10 on:** February 03, 2015, 01:21:48 am »

I'd like to see something like these with a built in LVDS or TMDS LCD interface. Would be a perfect interface to an LCD panel without a converter from HDMI to LVDS.

rolycat · « **Reply #11 on:** February 03, 2015, 03:21:35 am »

Quote from: Monkeh on February 02, 2015, 04:29:54 pm

Quote from: mojo-chan on February 02, 2015, 04:24:32 pm
It's a £25 SBC with excellent community support. What do you need a "good" NIC for, trying to build a USB NAS?

No, just something which doesn't munch CPU just to send a few packets down a wire.

It's a crap design. A bit more CPU doesn't fix it. There are, quite simply, better options. But the Raspi got the early media hype, so it gets all the attention.

Your prejudice is showing. "A bit more CPU" ?!?

It has around six times the performance, and with a quad-core processor it can afford to "munch" a few cycles in exchange for saving the cost of a full-bore Ethernet controller. If you need high-performance Ethernet spend more money and buy a different board.

The new Pi 2 offers a lot more processor power than the Beaglebone Black, twice the memory, a more powerful video processor and far more community support for beginners. And it's ten bucks cheaper. What are these "better options"?

It may not be the right choice for experienced electronics engineers, but it's a great choice for its target market - children and adults who want to get hands-on with computers and learn something about how they actually work.

Monkeh · « **Reply #12 on:** February 03, 2015, 03:51:50 am »

Quote from: rolycat on February 03, 2015, 03:21:35 am

Quote from: Monkeh on February 02, 2015, 04:29:54 pm
Quote from: mojo-chan on February 02, 2015, 04:24:32 pm
It's a £25 SBC with excellent community support. What do you need a "good" NIC for, trying to build a USB NAS?

No, just something which doesn't munch CPU just to send a few packets down a wire.

It's a crap design. A bit more CPU doesn't fix it. There are, quite simply, better options. But the Raspi got the early media hype, so it gets all the attention.

Your prejudice is showing. "A bit more CPU" ?!? It has around six times the performance, and with a quad-core processor it can afford to "munch" a few cycles in exchange for saving the cost of a full-bore Ethernet controller. If you need high-performance Ethernet spend more money and buy a different board.

The new Pi 2 offers a lot more processor power than the Beaglebone Black, twice the memory, a more powerful video processor and far more community support for beginners. And it's ten bucks cheaper. What are these "better options"?

It may not be the right choice for experienced electronics engineers, but it's a great choice for its target market - children and adults who want to get hands-on with computers and learn something about how they actually work.

An oDroid C1 is $35 shipped (that is, cheaper in the UK), faster, has real Ethernet (sure, it's a Realtek PHY, but at least it's not USB), and a CPU with freely available documentation. It offers an OTG port, RTC, and even an onboard ADC.

Yes, the Raspi is good for children and child-like (relatively speaking) adults. It is not, however, a good piece of hardware, and bolting on a few extra cores Broadcom found on a dusty shelf is not as big a step forward as they could have taken.

LukeW · « **Reply #13 on:** February 03, 2015, 03:57:49 am »

But what does Raspberry Pi actually offer in terms of "hands-on with computers and learn something about how they actually work"?

If you want to learn about getting started with C or Python or something and writing some programs, you can do that with any existing PC that most people already have.

Hell, if you want to learn about programming and computers, wait until you find a PC that somebody is throwing away in the kerbside rubbish, try and find one that looks intact and working, bring it home, get it running, reformat the disk, install Linux on it, and get started programming.

Cost = 0, and it's more educational, with knowledge more relevant to PC hardware that is widely used in the real world.

If you want to "really learn how a computer works" at a deep, fundamental level you might be best to go and get a Z80 or something and wire it up to some switches and LEDs. And of course you can get extensive books on the subject of that CPU, the instruction set, the datasheet etc, all the knowledge is open to you about the fundamentals of the chip.

I really don't think a closed box of proprietary, undocumented Broadcom IP actually offers you anything there. It's still a "black box" model of computing, it's just that the black box is shrunk down to the size of a single IC. Just because the Raspberry Pi is a bare PCB, and you can see the voltage regulator and you can see the USB interface and what not around the main IC, I don't see how that in and of itself teaches you "something about how computers actually work"

rolycat · « **Reply #14 on:** February 03, 2015, 04:41:05 am »

This has been debated before on this forum, and the answer is that resurrecting ancient PCs and wiring up crusty old Z80s or other obsolete microprocessors may well be a good way for individual hobbyists and enthusiasts to learn programming and/or electronics on a budget. It's totally impractical for children in a classroom environment.

The Raspberry Pi was designed from the outset as a tool for education, and its rampant popularity with 'makers' and hobbyists was an unexpected bonus for the charity which created and continues to develop it.

bbjk7 · « **Reply #15 on:** February 03, 2015, 05:35:33 am »

Bought the ODroid C1 and it just arrived yesterday, still need to get the right power and display connectors.

When I saw the headlines I was a bit worried, but despite all the hype, I'm still happy with my ODroid purchase and would buy it again... Even with this new RasPi released for $35USD

OdroidC1 v RaspPi2B
1.5Ghz x4 700Mhz x4
GBit Ethernet 100Mbit Ethernet
1gb Ram 1gb Ram
$35USD $35USD
Infrared No
eemc No

helius · « **Reply #16 on:** February 03, 2015, 05:49:46 am »

Electronics vendor calls itself a "charity" --- red flag.

rolycat · « **Reply #17 on:** February 03, 2015, 06:21:08 am »

This appears to be an unbiased and informative comparison between the Odroid C1 and the Raspberry Pi 2.

As is so often the case, which is 'better' depends on the requirements of the user.

bbjk7 · « **Reply #18 on:** February 03, 2015, 08:32:36 am »

Thanks rolycat, couldn't agree with you more

chickenHeadKnob · « **Reply #19 on:** February 04, 2015, 06:14:33 am »

Quote from: bbjk7 on February 03, 2015, 05:35:33 am

Bought the ODroid C1 and it just arrived yesterday, still need to get the right power and display connectors.

When I saw the headlines I was a bit worried, but despite all the hype, I'm still happy with my ODroid purchase and would buy it again... Even with this new RasPi released for $35USD

OdroidC1 v RaspPi2B
1.5Ghz x4 700Mhz x4
GBit Ethernet 100Mbit Ethernet
1gb Ram 1gb Ram
$35USD $35USD
Infrared No
eemc No

I, like Ivan just bought (a few weeks ago) the now obsolete B+

. So ya'all can thank us for triggering the release of the Pi2. I only wanted to find out how Mathematica 10 runs. It turns out dog ...slow... practically unusable. So now looking for an upgrade. Just to correct your table quoted above Pi2 is 900Mhz I believe. Also the difference in A7 to A5 in Dmips should result in only a 10 to 15 % advantage for the odroid once clock rate is figured in.

edit: I should add that if you are interested in interfacing homebuilt hardware, and what eevbee isn't, then the small incompatibility of the odroid's analog inputs maybe an irritation. It is for me, if I want an ADC I would go with an external spi based one anyway.

linux-works · « **Reply #20 on:** February 04, 2015, 06:31:58 am »

lol, just 31 days ago, I bought a b+ from amazon. when I saw the new annoucement, I wanted to see if I could still return my b+ to amazon. nope. one day too late. just my luck...

and yeah, the usb elephant-in-the-room bug is still basically there. it can't be truly fixed. sucks that they didn't think this all the way thru and keep releasing the same basic hobbled network system over and over again.

on the good side, its a great platform for playing with i2c and spi. can't easily do that with x86 style pc's.

rob77 · « **Reply #21 on:** February 04, 2015, 07:38:18 am »

i don't know guys why are you bitching so much about the RPi ethernet..... ok it uses more cpu, so what ? it was never intended to be a network gear ! for me and apparently many others (see how much of RPi boards were sold) the ethernet is working just fine

if you need a board with high performance ethernet then change your budget limit one order of magnitude higher and there's a lot of options in that budget limit

(and don't even try to comment like "Odroid got a 1Gbps ethernet" ... that absolutely doesn't mean it's high performance).

firewalker · « **Reply #22 on:** February 04, 2015, 07:42:21 am »

Windows 10 will officially support the Rpi2.

Alexander.

rolycat · « **Reply #23 on:** February 04, 2015, 09:21:57 am »

Quote from: helius on February 03, 2015, 05:49:46 am

Electronics vendor calls itself a "charity" --- red flag.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity - what precisely are you trying to insinuate?

Kjelt · « **Reply #24 on:** February 04, 2015, 12:09:07 pm »

I want to build a small device controlling my av gear over IP control so I had the choice between:

Arm32 like the STM32F207 with LWIP , design own board or buy something from embedded artists than spent probably 4 weeks getting LWIP and RTOS to do what I want and at least two days to get gcc up and running stable with nice ide

Rasp pi2 with Rasbian and it has python/gcc included up and running within 1 hour.

For the first time I choose the latter since my spare time is scarse at the moment, I have learned enough over ARM processors and c programming on work but for my hobby it makes less sense.
Yesterday I bought the pi2 (never ever worked with it) and at evening within 1 hour reading, downloading and installing the image was up and running and I could run some python scripts. I now need to learn Python first

but I could use the gcc also.

I think this is a great way for people not having access to good Arm C compilers and the est. 160+ hours needed to master it not forgetting the RTOS, LWIP and all other stuff to get things going. I do not mean the people just copying all readyset images for xmbc and mediaplayer stuff but the youngsters that are using the GPIO and starting to doing and running things, learning electronics and jeeez I am 48 but watched a youtube video yesterday where a 13 yo kid told me how to use python to send UDP packets

It is so easy kids can do it , try that with a bare Arm processor good luck teacher


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Author Topic: Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Released Today (Read 15326 times)

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