Faster Raspberry Pi brings low-price computing power to education

The Raspberry Pi 2 has four times as many processor cores and twice as much memory as its predecessor - the 4 million-selling device designed and made in Britain as a cheap way for children to learn programming - and can run the new Windows 10.

‘It’s about user-interface responses: it’s just snappier; everything happens faster,’ said Eben Upton, founder of the non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation that produces the computers, at a press conference this morning.

‘We’d like to sell a total of 3m in 2015. A lot of existing Raspberry Pi users are going to upgrade but the interesting thing about Pi 2 is it broadens the market a little bit in that we hope to stand a chance of customers using it as a second PC in their house.’

Although designed as an educational tool, the original Raspberry Pi has been widely embraced by adult enthusiasts and engineers, with the computer being used for a wide range of industrial and commercial applications from security systems to heating and ventilation to factory automation.