Microsoft has today announced that its upcoming Windows 10 operating system will support Raspberry Pi 2, the latest board from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. What\u2019s more, it\u2019ll be completely free for the Maker community through the Windows Developer Program for IoT.<\/p>\n
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The second-generation Raspberry Pi is a significant upgrade over the original. It\u2019s powered by a quad-core processor clocked at 900MHz, a graphics processing unit clocked at 250MHz, and 1GB of RAM. And at just $35, it will almost certainly be the cheapest Windows 10 PC you can buy.<\/p>\n
In comparison, the first Raspberry Pi has a single-core processor clocked at 700MHz. The increased power of the newer model \u2014 plus the upgrade in architecture from ARMv6 to ARMv7 \u2014 allows for full 1080p video decoding at 30fps, as well as support for the\u00a0h.264\/MPEG-4 AVC.<\/p>\n
It new model also has four USB ports (up from two), an HDMI connector, a microSD card slot, 100Mbit Ethernet, and a 3.5mm audio jack.<\/p>\n
\u201cRaspberry Pi has quickly become one of the Maker community\u2019s favorite platforms because their highly-capable, low-cost boards and compute modules enable developers to bring their vison [sic] to life,\u201d Microsoft said in a Windows Blog post. \u201cRaspberry Pi 2 is a surprisingly powerful device that opens up the world of computing and programing to a huge range of people and skill levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Microsoft promises to share more information about its Windows 10 plants for IoT in the coming months. In the meantime, you can register for the developer program<\/a> to get the latest information on the company\u2019s Maker efforts, and you can order your Raspberry Pi 2 from the official store<\/a>.<\/p>\n