The budget priced Raspberry Pi credit-card sized computing device has had a RAM doubling boost at no extra cost. If you order your Model B RasPi today it will come with 512MB of RAM installed, double the original model’s 256MB. As a reminder, the price to UK customers is £29.95 including delivery.
Extra Welsh RAM in your Pi
An official Raspberry Pi blog post by Eben Upton said “One of the most common suggestions we’ve heard since launch is that we should produce a more expensive “Model C” version of Raspberry Pi with extra RAM. This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently, and would enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB.”
The RasPi, made in South Wales, is designed to cost under $35 according to Mr Upton, so until now a RAM upgrade, however desirable, was unfeasible. Manufacturing partners have recently been able to help the foundation create a 512MB device within budget “I’d like to thank our partners, RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell, and the suppliers, particularly Samsung, Sony and Broadcom, for all their help in delivering a smooth transition to the 512MB,” announced Mr Upton.
Mobile possibilities and Android ICS multitaking
Eben Upton concluded his blog post by saying; “I’m looking forward to seeing what you all get up to with your shiny new Pis.” Indeed the extra RAM should enhance the capability of the RasPi. As well as the Java applications mentioned above, Mike Buffham of Element 14 (a RasPi distributor) said “The extra memory also enables higher performance applications and services - there is real potential to do things like add a touchscreen, then a power back and suddenly the Pi becomes mobile” He also pointed out that Android 4 will be much more usable and be able to multi-task much better on the 512MB RasPi than an on the old RasPi.
All customers with outstanding orders will get the 512MB version in place of the 256MB version they ordered. New firmware to access the additional memory is available here.
