Microsoft has announced that the upcoming Windows 10 OS will run on the Raspberry Pi 2 single board computer, the next generation of the Raspberry PI board whose new specs – a quad-core ARM7 based Broadcom CPU running at 900MHz and 1GB of RAM – will have six times the processing power of the first gen board but still remain only $35. According to the Raspberry Foundation the move had been in the pipeline for some time.

Windows 10 for Raspberry PI 2 will be available as part of the Windows Developer Program for IoT, although the actual release date has not yet been confirmed. Microsoft said of the move, “We see the Maker community as an amazing source of innovation for smart, connected devices that represent the very foundation for the next wave of computing, and we’re excited to be a part of this community.”

Through the same IoT developer program Microsoft had already delivered Windows for the Intel Galileo board last August, although due to it lacking display support and 256MB of RAM the OS was largely stripped-down. It’s not yet known what the new board – so small it could fit in the palm of your hand – will be like, but reports suggest it will be similarly stripped back.

Microsoft has called the board a “surprisingly powerful device”, a device that has reportedly sold over 4 million units already that has appealed to people of varying skill ranges. Part of Microsoft’s expansion into the Internet of Things, which will encompass an estimated 50 billion different devices come 2020, is giving developers the opportunity to innovate for free, and is key to Microsoft’s strategy in making its operating system technologically omnipresent. In an interview with The Street, Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets, said, “This speaks to the pressing need for Microsoft to court the developer community especially as the company is putting so many of their eggs in the Windows 10 basket,” adding that, “One of the missing pieces for Microsoft is the developer community, especially the younger developer movement.”

Photo credit: Raspberry PI