Raspberry Pi upgrade doubles the RAM

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 15 Oct 2012 at 09:59

The Raspberry Pi has seen its RAM doubled, for no added cost.

The popular cheap computing board originally came with 256MB of RAM, but users have complained that limits the usefulness of the device.

"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," said Raspberry Pi spokesperson Liz Upton. "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 downside of this suggestion for us is that we’re very attached to $35 as our highest price point," she said in a post on the Raspberry Pi blog. "With this in mind, we're pleased to announce that from today all Model B Raspberry Pis will ship with 512MB of RAM as standard."

Any outstanding orders with either distributor will get a free upgrade, with the 512MB models arriving as early as today. A firmware update will also be released to support the additional memory.

One of the distributors, Element 14, pointed out that by boosting the RAM, the board will be able to support Android 4 and play multimedia while also running applications - a problem with existing devices.

"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," said Mike Buffham, global head of EDE for Element 14's parent firm Premier Farnell.