The Raspberry Pi just got some serious competition. Brit developers Imagination has just released a new development system, called the MIPS Creator C120, which offers some serious functionality on a board. And what’s more they’re putting their money where their mouth is by offering the systems free of charge to all suitable projects. Just visit the site and enter in your details. [Update: the site is apparently down right now. Who would have thought it?]

When we say serious specs we mean it. The board comes with Debian Linux pre-loaded (Android KitKat arrives at the end of the month), and features a dual core 1.2GHz processor, 8GB Flash memory, 1GB RAM, HDMI HD out, Bluetooth, Ethernet and WiFi, USB and OTG ports, camera interface, UART headers, and comes complete with a power supply in the box. Oh and it also features a bootable SD card slot. It outputs 1080p at 60fps.

The overall result is a board which is just a little more square than the Pi, but which has about four times the flexibility baked in, not to mention the fact that the CPU is 170% faster than the Pi. The fact that it also comes with Bluetooth 4, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n on board as well as Ethernet, really blows most other systems of this type out of the water.

Sure the free giveaway is a launch gimmick (when you come to the party this late you need to do something pretty drastic, right?) but even so it’s a mighty compelling offer if you’ve got a project which needs this kind of system. And it’s all tightly linked in with the open source prpl foundation, which aims to open up development tools based around the Internet of Things and other areas.

So what are you waiting for, get off there and apply immediately! Apparently they’ve already seeded a bunch of these free boards throughout a number of UK universities. Good luck.