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Raspberry-Pi-3

Over the by 4 years, the Raspberry Pi has become known equally the world'southward virtually successful and accessible figurer platform that anyone can program. It'southward the kind of affair that reminds us fondly of the early eight-bit Apple 2, Atari, and Commodore days, and with plainly much more adequacy at present. It's existence used in schools beyond the globe, and a NASA astronaut even took i forth to the International Space Station. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now launched the Raspberry Pi 3, an upgraded model that is on auction now for the same $35 price, just a bit more than a twelvemonth after the Pi 2 landed.

The Raspberry Pi three includes a new Broadcom BCM2837 SoC with a 64-scrap processor for the first time — a i.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU that the visitor claims is roughly 10 times faster than the processor in the original model (at least on SysBench). The 33% crash-land in clock speed over the Pi two's 900MHz should deliver a l-60% increase in performance in 32-bit mode.

Raspberry Pi 3 Pi Supply

(Image credit: Pi Supply)

The Pi 3 also has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1, which vastly expands the variety of things y'all can practice with it (or at the very to the lowest degree, means you no longer need an Ethernet cablevision or a Wi-Fi adapter). Bluetooth makes information technology ideally suited for IoT-like applications, as now the unit of measurement can pick up data from sensors without needing a straight connection. The Pi 3'due south form factor remains largely the same, other than that the LEDs are now on the other side of the microSD card socket to make room for the antenna. Speaking of which, that microSD card slot is now simply that, and no longer a spring-loaded tray, which should exist more reliable in the long run.

Raspberry Pi 3 diagram Element14

(Paradigm credit: Element14)

The board runs from a 5V micro-USB power adapter equally earlier, and the company is recommending you use a 2.5A adapter in order to connect USB devices that require a lot of ability.

For at present, the company is using the aforementioned 32-flake Raspbian userland, and the Pi 3 is fully backwards compatible with the Pi 1 and Pi ii, including for all existing accessories (aside from anything that may obscure the LEDs in the new position). Company founder Eben Upton said on the official blog that they're currently investigating whether it'southward worth information technology to move to 64-bit mode for the performance improvements.

"The two main things that people do with their Pi are use information technology every bit a PC replacement or use it as an embedded computer," Mr Upton told the BBC. "The Pi 3 is doubling downwardly on both those things rather than going looking for new things to practise."

The Pi3 is available now from Element 14 and Pi Supply. The Pi 1 Model B+, Pi ii Model B, and original Pi remain on auction for $25, $35, and $20, respectively; Upton said in the post that it intends to build those models for as long as there's need.

This past yr has seem some competition announced for the Raspberry Pi, including the Arduino-similar $55 Snickerdoodle and CHIP, the $9 calculator, although the Raspberry Pi is notwithstanding the simply one people are actually buying for now (or are even able to purchase). The company also announced that as of the original Raspberry Pi's 4th birthday (today, another leap year), it has shipped over eight million units, including three million Raspberry Pi 2s.