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by jwoglom 1701 days ago
Definitely seems a bit disappointing that 5-6 years after the original Pi Zero there's still only 512MB of RAM. Regardless, I'm excited to see what new projects will become feasible with the extra CPU performance.

I just finished watching your YouTube video, so thanks for providing all of this insight. A new Pi Zero will certainly make small handheld emulators a lot more promising...
2 comments
throwaway81523 1701 days ago
I don't feel like I needed more memory or the cpu boost in the pi zero 2. I'd rather they stayed at the old $5 price, decreased power consumption, and added some analog and realtime capabilities. I had thought that was the idea of the RP2440 chip used in the pi pico. It would be great if they added that chip to a pi zero board (maybe in the same SOC as the main processor) so they would have some analog inputs and a somewhat realtime coprocessor.

I've done some fairly fancy Python app development under Linux on a 300mhz embedded ARMv6 board with 64MB of ram, so for lots of things the Pi Zero is already overkill. But an actual OS (i.e. Linux) does make programming a lot easier than an MCU board with an RTOS. So how about a "Pi -1" (minus one) with 1/4 of the resources and power consumption of the Pi 0?

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giantrobot 1700 days ago
Power savings is complicated. A Pi board is going to have a minimum power usage with the CPU only being a portion. A lower clocked CPU on a Pi -1 might reduce peak power usage but might not get much savings at idle vs a comparably configured Zero. The Zero would also have the option of underclocking for peak power savings with the ability to spin back up to work faster to return to idle faster. Don't forget disabling board components can yield baseline power savings on Pis [0].

[0] https://mlagerberg.gitbooks.io/raspberry-pi/content/5.1-powe...

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jiggunjer 1700 days ago
I think you'd need a SoC designed for phones instead of general computing to reduce power by that much.

Also, I'm curious what use-case do you have that would need an RTOS?

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tehbeard 1701 days ago
512mb probably means the power budget it's designed for doesn't get completely stomped.

If you need more memory just get the pi4 and a suitable power brick for it

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geerlingguy 1701 days ago
According to the launch post, they also couldn't find a single-die 1 GB RAM module, so they couldn't physically install more unless they upped the complexity of the design significantly.
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