With over 3 million boards sold, the Raspberry Pi is by far the most popular ARM Linux board on the market, but people are often asking for hardware upgrades with a faster processor, more RAM and so on. The good news is that a new Raspberry Pi board seems on the way, but since the real competitive of the Raspberry Pi is not the cheap hardware only, but software support and the community around the little ARM board. So instead of designing of completely new board, they’ve kept Broadcom BCM2835 and 512MB RAM, and mostly made some changes to the ports, and form factor.
Since the board has not been officially announced just yet, the full details are available, but according to various reports, the specs should be as follows:
- SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 processor @ 700MHz with VideoCore IV GPU
- System Memory – 512 MB SDRAM (PoP)
- Storage – micro SD card slot (push release type)
- Video & Audio Output – HDMI and AV via 3.5mm jack.
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet
- USB – 4x USB 2.0 ports, 1x micro USB for power
- Expansion
- 2×20 pin headerfor GIO
- Camera header (MIPI CSI?)
- Display header (MIPI DSI?)
- Power – 5V via micro USB port.
The new Raspberry Pi appears to be better suited for enclosure thanks to the placements of the various ports, and four mounting holes. It loses the RCA connector, but the 3.5mm jack appears to combine both audio and video. The SD card is replaced by a micro SD card, and instead of just 2 USB ports, it gets 4 USB ports via Microchip LAN9514 USB to Ethernet chip. There are also report of a better audio codec being used, but it’s nowhere to be seem on the picture, and possibly soldered at the back of the board.
Raspberry Pi Model B+ was first spotted by AppDated on European retail site Reichelt, but the page have now been remove, and it was not clear whether it was an official Raspberry Pi foundation product or made independently by a third party. But I found the first picture above in Google Cache, and it looks pretty official, as it will be apparently sold by Element14, one of the main Raspberry Pi sellers, and there’s a “Raspberry Pi” copyright on the board’s silkscreen.
Since it’s a leak, there’s obviously no availability or pricing information available.
Via Liliputing
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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It really need a new CPU and more ram, it is very under power compare to even a TV stick.
USB – 4x USB 4.0 port, 1x micro USB for power
Is it a typo?
The key point is did they remove then power constraint of 0.7A power supply? Nearly just after start you need a powered HUB for existing Raspberry, not to mention problems with current limitation on the GPIO which sometimes is to low.
I really wish they would move 100% to the COM model (like with their ‘compute module’); it would allow for many more different options for the board, and it would also mean that they could upgrade the CPU/GPU/RAM independently of all the other features (an upgrade of which I think is due, at last).
Proper port placement … finally.
@Jacky they can`t give it new CPU since they want to keep backwards compatibility and low cost. Not to mention RasPBMC (XBMC on pi) blows away all TV sticks with Android TRYING to run XBMC.
I wouldn’t say that when comparing to modern sticks. There is either a good player or XBMC with hardware acceleration. S802 based dongles have XBMC preinstalled, and as an Android they has many other usages 😉 And it’s a consumer product made in much higher quantities than Raspberry.
RPi goes the way of the Amiga. Too few changes, too late.
riklaunim : Xan : Proper port placement … finally. @Jacky they cant give it new CPU since they want to keep backwards compatibility and low cost. Not to mention RasPBMC (XBMC on pi) blows away all TV sticks with Android TRYING to run XBMC. I wouldn’t say that when comparing to modern sticks. There is either a good player or XBMC with hardware acceleration. S802 based dongles have XBMC preinstalled, and as an Android they has many other usages And it’s a consumer product made in much higher quantities than Raspberry. Thing is those sticks dont come close to 50$… Read more »
@Slackstick
Too late for what?
http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/12de/0900766b812decd9.pdf
and schematic: http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/12fa/0900766b812faa1d.pdf
It’s named Raspberry Pi B+ for a good reason: it’s just a small update of the RPi hardware, with practically guaranteed backwards software compatibility as explained by Xan. My guess is it will cost a couple of euros more than the RPi B, and it will save people the trouble of buying a USB hub in those cases where they need more than two USB ports as in the RPi B (for example, mouse + keyboard + WiFi dongle). The change from SD to microSD support is welcome too. People who need more RAM or a faster CPU should take… Read more »
@Andrew
More like this B+ is simply the end result of replacing the USB controller with something that actually works as it should. Following, the MicroSD port and the dongle RCA are just no-brainers to free up space.
What I suspect to be the real benefit here is the network controller. Previously the network controller was ad-hoced to the USB controller which created a lot of bus noise and reduced the speed substantially. Now, I hope this was addressed considering the new usb ports mean they actually put some effort into it.
Cheapest RK3188 2GB RAM sticks on dx.com are now cheaper by a bit than the shop price of Raspberry Pi (in Poland). Plus they have WiFi (and often Bluetooth) and powered USB included in that price.
That’s not the intended market for the Pi. The Pi Foundation wants to educate. Not entertain.
@Xan: Sorry, wrong addressee.
Official launch announced: http://www.raspberrypi.org/introducing-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus/
A pig with lipstick on is still a pig.
LAN : @Andrew More like this B+ is simply the end result of replacing the USB controller with something that actually works as it should. Following, the MicroSD port and the dongle RCA are just no-brainers to free up space. No, the USB controller is the same as it’s always been with all of its unresolved problems as it’s part of the BCM2835 SoC itself. It looks like they’re just using a SMSC LAN9514 instead of the 9512 in order to get two more USB ports than the Model B. What I suspect to be the real benefit here is… Read more »
And an RPi B+ with two extra USB ports and many, many other significant improvements compared to the original RPi B, with 100% backwards software compatibility at the very same $35 price is a very good deal, imho.
Again: people should think of this as hardware revision 1.2 (if the RPi A was 1.0 and the RPi B was 1.1), and not as a new project altogether.
@LAN
The RPi B+ uses a LAN9514 chip instead of the LAN9512 in the original RPi B, so that specific bottleneck is still there.
@Andrew
The Model A actually came after the Model B. Also, there are two different Model Bs. Amongst the various changes made the old version of the Model B has 256 MB of RAM, the newer version has 512 MB.