The Raspberry Pi foundation has launched the third version of its
popular low-power Raspberry Pi development platform, the Raspberry Pi 3.
It's priced at $35, the same as the Raspberry Pi 2 mini computer
unveiled last year, but adds a much request feature - integrated Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth connectivity.
Raspberry Pi Founder Eben Upton in a blog post announced
that the new launch commemorates the company's fourth birthday. Upton
also detailed that the company has so far shipped 8 million Raspberry Pi
units, including three million Raspberry Pi 2 units. The company claims
that Raspberry Pi 2 is the "UK's all-time best-selling computer."
Raspberry
Pi 3 will go on sale starting Monday from element14 and RS Components,
and other resellers. The company also announced that at launch they will
be using the same 32-bit Raspbian userland that have been used on other
(previous generation) Raspberry Pi devices. The company will decide
whether to move to the 64-bit mode over the next few months after
investigating.
Some of the highlights of the Raspberry Pi 3
include a 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor which the company
says has 10x performance of the Raspberry Pi 1. Despite being available
at the same price as Raspberry Pi 2, the Raspberry Pi 3 will feature integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and
Bluetooth 4.1. It will be complete compatible with Raspberry Pi 1 and
Raspberry Pi 2. For Raspberry Pi 3, the company says that Broadcom
supports a new SoC, the BCM2837.
"The 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM
Cortex-A7 CPU complex has been replaced by a custom-hardened 1.2GHz
64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53. Combining a 33% increase in clock speed
with various architectural enhancements, this provides a 50-60%
increase in performance in 32-bit mode versus Raspberry Pi 2, or roughly
a factor of ten over the original Raspberry Pi," said Upton.