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To celebrate the fourth birthday of the original 256MB Raspberry Pi Model B, The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched a new mini PC – the Pi 3.
The Raspberry Pi 3 is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Raspberry Pi 2), and features a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, which offers 10 times the performance of Raspberry Pi 1.
The mini PC also comes with integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1. It is also completely compatible with Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 devices.
“For Raspberry Pi 3, Broadcom have supported us with a new SoC, BCM2837. This retains the same basic architecture as its predecessors BCM2835 and BCM2836, so all those projects and tutorials that rely on the precise details of the Raspberry Pi hardware will continue to work,” said The Raspberry Pi Foundation in a blog post.
“The 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU complex has been replaced by a custom-hardened 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53.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 per cent increase in clock speed with various architectural enhancements, this provides a 50-60 per cent increase in performance in 32-bit mode versus Raspberry Pi 2, or roughly a factor of ten over the original Raspberry Pi.”
The Raspberry Pi 3 is available to buy today from the foundation’s partners element14 and RS Components, as well as other resellers.
It’s certainly been a busy four years for the firm, which revealed that it has now shipped over eight million units, including three million units of the Raspberry Pi 2, making the mini PCs the UK’s all-time best-selling computer.
Towards the end of last year, the PC maker launched a new service in partnership with element14 to provide design and manufacturing services to firms wanting customised mini PCs.
System builders, businesses, retailers and anyone else who wishes to order a bulk of Raspberry Pi PCs can now request to re-configure the board layout. They’ll be able to add or remove headers, connectors or interfaces and make changes to configuration and on-board memory.
Also last year, the firm released an official Raspberry Pi case. It teamed up with T-Zero to develop the case, which is priced at £5.99.
Check out Raspberry Pi’s head of communications Liz Upton’s ‘day in the life’ column here.
