It's also launching alongside a beta version of a new 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS, another first for Raspberry Pi, which has been limited to 32-bit since 2011.

In order to map all 8GB of RAM into the address space of a single process, a 64-bit operating system is needed. As such, the Raspberry Pi Foundation also announced the release of an early beta of ...

To take full advantage of this extra memory, a 64-bit version of the foundation's official operating system, Raspbian, has been released in early beta, though it's now called Raspberry Pi OS.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has made a 64-bit version of its operating system available. It won't run on all Raspberry Pi hardware but it should on some of the more modern hardware.

For now, 8GB is as high as it goes… but that was still enough to prompt the Raspberry Pi Foundation to release a new 64-bit version of its Linux-based operating system for Raspberry Pi computers.

Today's Raspberry Pi 4 lineup is far more capable, featuring a 64-bit Broadcom chip that runs at 1.5GHz and RAM of 2GB, 4GB and as of last week 8GB.

Raspberry Pi has upgraded its flagship board, with the Raspberry Pi 4 now coming in an 8GB RAM flavor for those who need more memory.

With that in mind, an early beta of a 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS is being released and it will sit alongside the 32-bit version. Both versions will run on the 8GB Pi.

On the software front, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has started working on a 64-bit version of Raspbian, the operating system designed to run on a Raspberry Pi.