RPi with 512mb Memory?

Now it's official. A 512MB Pi, and we certainly as more often than not heard it here first.

Thank you all deep miners of the Pi caverns to keep us all on the forefront of knowledge.

Ray

P.S. Dear Distro maintainers please do not suddenly make all your Pi OS distros twice as big and only suitable for the larger memory machines.

Ray Hughes wrote:

 

Now it's official. A 512MB Pi, and we certainly as more often than not heard it here first.

 

Thank you all deep miners of the Pi caverns to keep us all on the forefront of knowledge.

 

Ray

 

P.S. Dear Distro maintainers please do not suddenly make all your Pi OS distros twice as big and only suitable for the larger memory machines.

 

Pretty sure that the people here had no more idea that a 512 was imminently on the way than anywhere else. Lots of people predicting it eventually (well, obvious it was going to happen at some point), but not sure anyone predicted it so soon. Anyone can make Pi in the the sky predictions, its getting the timing right that's the important bit, and I don't reckon anyone saw this one coming so soon.

Making a distro twice as 'big' doesn't mean you need twice the memory - the kernel stays the same size (within reason) on any platform. Linux uses swap, so lower memory system will still work, but slower.

Bill.

So it looks like there are already instructions on how to configure the Pi to make use of the extra memory over on the RasPi forum.

Now I just need the Pi to arrive :-)

One of my old ones will be consigned as a permanent Air print server - any thoughts on where the 512 Meg version will most show improvement over the 256 Meg version ?

Steve, I would guess the most improvement would be in multitasking. Say a multi-user webserver. In 'normal use', though, I'd expect X windows to improve markedly with multiple windows.

Overall video performance is likely to improve also as at the moment the memory allocation has to be played with to get the balance right.

Try working with the other participants on this forum Billy please, instead of against them.  Just a few hours ago you called the 512MB version "mythical", despite the mounting evidence for it, and now that it's official you're busy backpedaling with "any one could have predicted there was going to be a 512 version".  There's no need for this.

We try to cooperate here, piecing together information from many different sources because RPF is not forthcoming about what it does.  If you're not happy working with us on this then don't, but fighting against it is out of place.

@Jamodio. I was told a few days ago that this was not a place for name calling. You just called me a moron (I assume you were talking to me). Don't call me a moron, that not very nice - or are you not a very nice person? I'm pretty sure that classes as name calling anyway. Even where I'm from.

RE: 1GB RAM chip - are you sure that would work on Raspberry PI, because a quick read of the specs would indicate that it wouldn't. And I'm not convinced that device is available.

@Morgaine. A few hours ago the device was indeed mythical. It has now, with the announcement, become factual. I'm not backpedalling and I also I don't delete my old posts when I'm wrong. Mythical does not imply it doesn't exist, merely that there is not enough evidence to say that it does exist - yet. Please don't read stuff in to my posts that isn't there.

I'm not going to work with you btw. Certainly not the last two posters anyway, you're mean to people. Happy to help out with others who don't feel to need to call people Morons.

As to the Raspberry Pi Foundation not being forthcoming? Like what? Should they have told people in advance there was a move to 512MB? That would be commercial suicide. What are they not forthcoming about that would be of use for their target market? Today we learnt that there is a 512device, we also learnt that the accelerated X driver is under serious development. Thats damn straight stuff! Do you want them to tell you all their commercial stuff? Or what?

Bill (not a moron despite what Jamodio says)

jamodio wrote:

 

Instead being a moron contesting anything that anybody says (starting with your useless comment about version numbers,) you should do more due diligence about what is going on, and who is working on what. It was not difficult to envision that sooner or later the Rpi was going to have 512MB RAM since RPF was already working and testing preliminary images of Android 4.0.

 

BTW, your citation and assumed authoritative answer from one of the moderators on the RPi forum is not valid ...

http://omapworld.com/4430_8Gb__DDR_PoP_111_1003122.pdf

 

I don't know what is your mission here but so far the only thing you are contributing is noise and additional fuel for flame wars.

Actually, forgot to ask something here - despite your inability to be polite, what's Android got to do with 512MB, and I don't remember talking about version numbers-  what's up there dude?

My mission? To provide an antidote  to the bitter vitriol and bile spouting from some of the posters on this site, who have an over exagerated sense of thier own importance, just 'cos they got banned from the other one. or something like that. Don't actually have a official mission statement, so I make it up as I go along. And it's the middle of the night, I'm tired aftyer working 14 hours straight, so it might change at short notice.

jamodio wrote:

 

Well you are failing in your mission and even if you were in front of my face I'll still call you a moron, I don't feel the need to be polite with people like you that seems to have every intent to create flame wars.

Good luck with that. Next time you are in the Far East give me a shout.

ps. See my previous comment.

Since my original reply stating that the 1GB ram package quoted by Jamodio has been deleted, presumably because he didnt like to be shown to be wrong, I'll reiterate. That package will not work on a Raspberry Pi. It's the right physical size, and the right sort of DDR2, but it's interface is different and it has a different number of balls in its BGA array to find on the Raspberry Pi SoC. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to compare the datasheet with those of the current 256 RAM chips used on the Rasberry Pi for the exact reason.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

My prediction now; there will never be a 1GB version. You heard it here first! (Citation : no one makes 1GB ddr2 PoP ram, and its an old technology, so no-one ever will).

Billy, you forgot to include a smiley

On Sept 2 earlier in this thread, John Beetem wrote:

 

The RasPi forum has just twigged to the 512MB version: see this thread.  On 31 August jamesh said that 512MB is the limit for the current board.  He didn't give away any RasPi Foundation plans.

Now, here's my prediction: there won't be a 1GB version with the BCM2835.  But there will most likely be future RasPis with different SoCs, perhaps even ones with a more powerful general-purpose CPU or multiple CPUs so you can dedicate one to USB and other housekeeping.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

My prediction now; there will never be a 1GB version. You heard it here first! (Citation : no one makes 1GB ddr2 PoP ram, and its an old technology, so no-one ever will).

Billy, you forgot to include a smiley

On Sept 2 earlier in this thread, John Beetem wrote:

 

The RasPi forum has just twigged to the 512MB version: see this thread.  On 31 August jamesh said that 512MB is the limit for the current board.  He didn't give away any RasPi Foundation plans.

Now, here's my prediction: there won't be a 1GB version with the BCM2835.  But there will most likely be future RasPis with different SoCs, perhaps even ones with a more powerful general-purpose CPU or multiple CPUs so you can dedicate one to USB and other housekeeping.

John Beetem wrote:

 

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

My prediction now; there will never be a 1GB version. You heard it here first! (Citation : no one makes 1GB ddr2 PoP ram, and its an old technology, so no-one ever will).

Billy, you forgot to include a smiley

 

On Sept 2 earlier in this thread, John Beetem wrote:

 

The RasPi forum has just twigged to the 512MB version: see this thread.  On 31 August jamesh said that 512MB is the limit for the current board.  He didn't give away any RasPi Foundation plans.

 

Now, here's my prediction: there won't be a 1GB version with the BCM2835.  But there will most likely be future RasPis with different SoCs, perhaps even ones with a more powerful general-purpose CPU or multiple CPUs so you can dedicate one to USB and other housekeeping.

But that's cheating! I'd put money on their being a new Raspberry Pi with better SoC and 1GB but only when the p[rice point meets what they sell for now. And that will be a year at least.

John Beetem wrote:

 

But there will most likely be future RasPis with different SoCs, perhaps even ones with a more powerful general-purpose CPU or multiple CPUs so you can dedicate one to USB and other housekeeping.

It's a reasonable guess that no engineer (hardware or software) who has been stung by the Pi's USB faults will want to repeat that experience.  Whatever SoC is chosen for the next Pi design, I think it is highly likely that it will contain a fully functional USB controller in hardware.

There's a limit to how much punishment people are willing to take.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

John Beetem wrote:

 

But there will most likely be future RasPis with different SoCs, perhaps even ones with a more powerful general-purpose CPU or multiple CPUs so you can dedicate one to USB and other housekeeping.

 

It's a reasonable guess that no engineer (hardware or software) who has been stung by the Pi's USB faults will want to repeat that experience.  Whatever SoC is chosen for the next Pi design, I think it is highly likely that it will contain a fully functional USB controller in hardware.

 

There's a limit to how much punishment people are willing to take.

That's not a reasonable guess. Engineers work round problems, they don't just whine on about them and go elsewhere, especially if there is nowhere else to go. As far as my experience goes, the latest driver changes mean the USB works pretty well, so the vast majority of people will presumably not see any issues with USB, and I'm thinking that further changes will make it even better. Of course the vast majority of people buying the Pi are not engineers (yet) either.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

It's a reasonable guess that no engineer (hardware or software) who has been stung by the Pi's USB faults will want to repeat that experience.  Whatever SoC is chosen for the next Pi design, I think it is highly likely that it will contain a fully functional USB controller in hardware.

 

There's a limit to how much punishment people are willing to take.

 

That's not a reasonable guess. Engineers work round problems, they don't just whine on about them and go elsewhere, especially if there is nowhere else to go.

Speaking for myself as a computer engineer, I do work around problems all the time -- if it's possible, and it's practical, and it's in the best interests of the product.  Sometimes it's time to bid adieu to a chip or technology -- no matter how nostalgic you feel towards it -- and move on to something newer and better.  I don't know the specifics of the Synopsys USB core used in the BCM2835, but given its published list of limitations and what other people have been saying here at element14 and at the RasPi forum I would guess that software alone will only go so far towards fixing the problems.  If the problems are because of USB core limitations, some due to capacity and some due to real-time response, working around them is bound to be incomplete.  If the problems are fixable by software, then it's just a matter of how good the documentation is and whether Linux can be made to respond fast enough.  However, we've heard the low-level device driver software is pretty hard to grok, so it may be that a better RasPi will arrive before the BCM2835 USB problems are fully solved