Benchmarking the Raspberry Pi 2 in Python

Well, I went off the the Post Office and got my Raspberry Pi 2. I really wanted to find out what kind of improvements you see when you use it.

The answer is, a lot. 

Booting was snappy, and the time to launch X-Windows was quite a bit quicker (although I'm not sure of the effect of the different SD cards I was using). But things got quite conclusive when I ran a little Python profiler:

• Original Raspberry Pi B:  207 function calls in 0.017 seconds
• Raspbery Pi B 2: 207 function calls in 0.003 seconds

This is just one test, but it shows a lot of promise. Python really seems to benefit from the extra cores as well as the faster processor.

Just pootling around the internet with the browser is a lot quicker than the original Raspberry Pi, but doesn't really compare with my super cheap Linx tablet, which is on paper a broadly comparable device. I'm not yet convinced that someone looking at the Pi 2 as a desktop replacement will find it a good plan, but as a step up from the original it is fantastic.