Upgraded Raspberry Pi Offers Windows And Linux

-

The Raspberry Pi has been a great success, selling millions since launch in 2012 and igniting hobbyists' imagination everywhere. The Pi is a tiny computer at a tiny price, but now the arrival of a seriously upgraded Raspberry Pi 2 has brought the performance that the first lacked, in a package the same size at the same cost of US$35.

The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, to give its full name, bumps the memory (RAM) from 512MB to 1GB, and introduces a 900mhz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor. The new board also requires less power and is pin-compatible with previous boards so it will be backwards-compatible with existing projects.

Simon’s son, James, has been a bit click-happy when programs are loading. A little more horsepower and memory might avoid seeing multiple copies of programs load up as an impatient eight-year-old wonders: “Did I click it? Let me just click again.”


We built a 64-node Raspberry Pi cluster at Southampton in 2012, and it made a great demonstrator, but the low processor performance really limited the possibilities.

Raspberry Pi Supercomputer using original Model B and Lego Simon Cox

A quad-core Pi cluster will not only perform better (an estimated six times better, according to the Pi team) but also provide performance closer to real world high-performance computing systems, which have all moved to multi-core processors. It will allow us to show simple examples from some of the real simulation code we use in science and engineering, which struggle to even run on the previous Pi model.

We hope this will further help to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers about how we use computers to understand the world around us, and how we develop code for much larger high-performance computers – and all at a much lower cost than the millions of pounds required for large supercomputers.

Windows in a tiny footprint
For us, the biggest opportunity is that Microsoft has confirmed it will deliver a version of its Windows 10 operating system that runs on the Raspberry Pi 2 – free of charge for hobbyists through the Windows Developer Program.

This makes it a truly versatile piece of hardware that provides the best of both worlds: a Linux and Windows-compatible device with a tiny footprint which is ready for use with Internet of things-related projects, equipped as it is with hardware pins to attach it to external devices and sensors (which are also supported by Windows 10).

With Windows come all the development tools such as Visual Studio, libraries and languages such as C# to add to the many tools that can already run on the Pi such as Scratch and Python.

Sweetness in the cloud
We’re also excited by the possibility Windows 10 brings of connecting Raspberry Pi devices to the cloud, and the Windows development tools should make this much more straightforward. Most of us are familiar with using the cloud for email, storing pictures, and social media. But for our research work in science and engineering the cloud gives us access to huge, shared computing power and data storage, with which we can simulate the complex ways in which tiny molecules interact, or astrophysical calculations on how the universe works.

We can also use the cloud to analyze data collected from thousands of sensors on Raspberry Pi-based Internet of things devices. For example, these might be sensors in a rainforest to enable us to understand and make better decisions about the effect of human behavior on the environment. Across a transport network ubiquitous sensors might also help ease traffic flow through our ever increasingly congested cities and motorways.

Community, community, community
While there are other similar devices out there such as the Arduino, BeagleBoard, Odroid and many others, for us the community that has developed around Raspberry Pi is absolutely key to its success. The community is huge, friendly, and everyone is keen to share their experiences and help out.
If the predictions of 26 billion Internet of things devices by 2020 are to be realised it will require the sort of easy-to-program hardware and supportive community of developers that has been catalyzed by Pi. And with the addition of Windows support, that community looks set to grow to include many more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Most Commonly Sold Commercial Jets to Airlines

-
Image
For the common plane passengers, their only concern is to buy the ticket that they need, get on the plane and wait until it has landed in their destination. Oftentimes, people take the plane and get off it without even bothering to know what type of aircraft it is. For the enthusiasts, details about the plane they are riding are really important. Truth is, knowing the aircrafts which companies use is actually necessary. This will help in determining safety and convenience for the passengers. With all the new aeronautical technologies and advanced engineering that we have these days, the list of airplane types and models continue to grow longer. But what are the ones which are commonly bought by airline companies? Here is a list of aircrafts which are built for commercial flights so the companies do not hesitate to invest in them. 10. Airbus A380 This is an aircraft which is manufactured by the Airbus Company. It is a plane which is widely used by airline companies like E...
Read more

Microsoft Edge just got a killer feature to beat Chrome and how to use it

-
Image
Microsoft gets Google Chrome’s forced dark mode — here’s how to enable it Microsoft Edge has brought in the option to force a dark mode on web pages even if they don’t support it, giving it another feature to tempt people over from Google Chrome. Based on the same engine Chrome’s dark mode uses, Edge's version will change the color of a website’s background, text, and other elements on the page, effectively forcing a dark mode on to a site. For people who do a lot of evening web surfing, this forced dark mode will make flipping through web pages less of an eye strain. Google Chrome used to also force a dark mode onto websites, which was a feature of its Canary experimental browser that users had to enable. Google has since removed the option. But phones site MobiGyaan discovered such a feature is still in the Edge browser. However, it also has to be forcefully enabled as it doesn’t exist in a simple drop-down option or sub-menu in the browser. How to enable forced dark...
Read more

Ice ages made Earth's ocean crust thicker

-
Image
Signatures of climate cycles spotted in hillocks on the sea floor. The Earth's ice ages have left their mark on the thickness of the planet's oceanic crust, scientists have discovered. During glacial periods, when sea levels are low, the magma that spreads out from mid-ocean ridges to form virgin crust wells up thick and fast. But the production of new crust is stunted in warmer times when sea levels are high, such as they are today. “We know that volcanism has an effect on climate. What we’re seeing is that climate cycles are also affecting ocean volcanism,” says Richard Katz, a geophysicist at the University of Oxford, UK, and one of the authors of the study, which is reported today in Science. The researchers say that they have spotted the effect in chains of hillocks under the sea between Australia and the Antarctic. The reason, Katz explains, is that higher sea levels exert a greater pressure on Earth’s mantle below the ocean floor. This seems to slow the tr...
Read more