Book Image

Raspberry Pi Computer Architecture Essentials

By : Andrew K. Dennis, Teemu O Pohjanlehto
Book Image

Raspberry Pi Computer Architecture Essentials

By: Andrew K. Dennis, Teemu O Pohjanlehto

Overview of this book

With the release of the Raspberry Pi 2, a new series of the popular compact computer is available for you to build cheap, exciting projects and learn about programming. In this book, we explore Raspberry Pi 2’s hardware through a number of projects in a variety of programming languages. We will start by exploring the various hardware components in detail, which will provide a base for the programming projects and guide you through setting up the tools for Assembler, C/C++, and Python. We will then learn how to write multi-threaded applications and Raspberry Pi 2’s multi-core processor. Moving on, you’ll get hands on by expanding the storage options of the Raspberry Pi beyond the SD card and interacting with the graphics hardware. Furthermore, you will be introduced to the basics of sound programming while expanding upon your knowledge of Python to build a web server. Finally, you will learn to interact with the third-party microcontrollers. From writing your first Assembly Language application to programming graphics, this title guides you through the essentials.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Raspberry Pi Computer Architecture Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

VideoCore IV GPU


As we covered in Chapter 1, Introduction to the Raspberry Pi's Architecture and Setup, of this title, the Raspberry Pi 2 comes equipped with a Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU.

A GPU is a piece of electronic hardware specifically geared towards calculating complex mathematics and altering memory at high speed for the creation and manipulation of images in a frame buffer.

You will be exploring how to access the frame buffer via a C program shortly.

The graphical processing unit the Raspberry Pi 2 comes with provides a variety of features, including OpenMAX, Open EGL, OpenGL 1.1 and 2.2, and Open VG1.1. We will explore some of these briefly later in this chapter as well.

However, due to the complexity of these technologies, it is out of the scope of this book to delve into each in detail. For those who are interested, a comprehensive guide can be found at https://jan.newmarch.name/RPi/, including example programs.

In order to showcase some of the abilities of the GPU you will find a number...