Old Pi is Still Tasty

Almost since it was first released, fans of the Raspberry Pi have asked when it the hardware will be updated with better components. A faster CPU perhaps? Double the RAM? Built in wifi? The list of components you could upgrade is long. This request was brought up again when the Raspberry Pi foundation announced the sale of the two millionth Pi.

First I think we should step back for a moment and consider the magnitude of this achievement. 2,000,000.Two meeealion. That’s a whole lot of tiny computers. Not only has this sales volume let the foundation move production back to the UK, these Pis have been used to build computer labs in Africa, teach children Scratch programming, photograph endangered species in infra-red and countless micro-servers where a Pi is strapped to the back of a Costco hard drive. In short, the Raspberry Pi has become an engine for innovation.

At first, I too wanted a new Raspberry Pi with a spec update. True, the specs are anemic. It’s fine and well to say ‘what do you expect for 35$’ but that doesn’t make my code run any faster. Upon further reflection, however, I’ve realized that not updating brings some benefits as well.

Keeping the specs identical means a stable platform. If I buy a Pi three years from now it will run software exactly as my first Pi from a year ago did. Stability is very important; especially when we are talking about software often used in poor conditions without IT staff. The same goes for accessories. Every camera module and GPIO extender is built for this specific device. They will continue to work perfectly in the future.

Keeping the specs identical means our code has to get faster instead. Modern software is blazingly inefficient and it tends to not age well. X Windows on the Raspberry Pi is extremely slow, even though it ran fine on my 486 in college at one tenth the speed. I could only dream of owning a 700mhz computer in 1995. Instead of throwing faster hardware at our problems we need to improve our code. I’m currently building a GPU accelerated graphics API, targeting the Raspberry Pi first. If it can run at 60 fps on the Pi then it can run anywhere.

Keeping the specs identical means we explore and document everything. While slow, the Raspberry Pi has some very interesting hardware that can do amazing things when used properly. Only devices with a long life span get fully explored. Just look at the things people have done with the NES and C64s. Because these devices were so popular they were documented (i.e.: reverse engineered) in exhaustive detail. Today I could build a simple NES emulator over a (long) weekend if I chose, thanks to the hard work done by the community over the years. If we keep the specs the same then the Raspberry Pi will be similarly dissected and documented.

I do not long for a new Raspberry Pi. I long for better software that lets me do more with what we already have. Here’s to another two million identical Pis; each a spark for a new idea, not new hardware.

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Posted November 19th, 2013

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