Raspberry Pi 3 on sale now at $35
* Eben Upton
* 29th Feb 2016
* 296 Comments
Exactly four years ago, on 29 February 2012, we unleashed the original
256MB Raspberry Pi Model B on a largely unsuspecting world. Since then,
we've shipped over eight million units, including three million units
of Raspberry Pi 2, making us the UK's all-time best-selling computer.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has grown from a handful of volunteers to
have over sixty full-time employees, including our new friends from
Code Club. We've sent a Raspberry Pi to the International Space Station
and are training teachers around the world through our Picademy
program.
In celebration of our fourth birthday, we thought it would be fun to
release something new. Accordingly, Raspberry Pi 3 is now on sale for
$35 (the same price as the existing Raspberry Pi 2), featuring:
* A 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU (~10x the performance
of Raspberry Pi 1)
* Integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1
* Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1 and 2
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
BCM2837, BCM43438 and Raspberry Pi 3
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 which rely on the
precise details of the Raspberry Pi hardware will continue to work. 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900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU complex has been replaced by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.
James Adams spent the second half of 2015 designing a series of
prototypes, incorporating BCM2837 alongside the BCM43438 wireless
"combo" chip. He was able to fit the wireless functionality into very
nearly the same form-factor as the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ and
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B; the only change is to the position of the LEDs,
which have moved to the other side of the SD card socket to make room
for the antenna. Roger Thornton ran the extensive (and expensive)
wireless conformance campaign, allowing us to launch in almost all
countries simultaneously. Phil Elwell developed the wireless LAN and
Bluetooth software.
All of the connectors are in the same place and have the same
functionality, and the board can still be run from a 5V micro-USB power
adapter. This time round, we're recommending a 2.5A adapter if you want
to connect power-hungry USB devices to the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi 3 is available to buy today from our partners element14
and RS Components, and other resellers. You'll need a recent NOOBS or
Raspbian image from our downloads page. At launch, we are using the
same 32-bit Raspbian userland that we use on other Raspberry Pi
devices; over the next few months we will investigate whether there is
value in moving to 64-bit mode.
FAQS
We'll keep updating this list over the next couple of days, but here
are a few to get you started.
Are you discontinuing earlier Raspberry Pi models?
No. We have a lot of industrial customers who will want to stick with
Raspberry Pi 1 or 2 for the time being. We'll keep building these
models for as long as there's demand. Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ and
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B will continue to sell for $25 and $35
respectively.
What about Model A+?
Model A+ continues to be the $20 entry-level Raspberry Pi for the time
being. We do expect to produce a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A, with the Model
A+ form factor, during 2016.
What about the Compute Module?
We expect to introduce a BCM2837-based Compute Module 3 in the next few
months. We'll be demoing Compute Module 3 at our partners' launch
events this morning.
Are you still using VideoCore?
Yes. VideoCore IV 3D is the only publicly documented 3D graphics core
for ARM-based SoCs, and we want to make Raspberry Pi more open over
time, not less. BCM2837 runs most of the VideoCore IV subsystem at
400MHz and the 3D core at 300MHz (versus 250MHz for earlier devices).
Where does the "10x performance" figure come from?
10x is a typical figure for a multi-threaded CPU benchmark like
SysBench. Real-world applications will see a performance increase of
between 2.5x (for single-threaded applications) and >20x (for
NEON-enabled video codecs).
Credits
A project like this requires a vast amount of focused work from a large
team over an extended period. A partial list of those who made major
direct contributions to the BCM2837 chip program, BCM43438 integration
and Raspberry Pi 3 follows: Dinesh Abadi, James Adams, Cyrus Afghahi,
Sayoni Banerjee, Jonathan Bell, Marc Bright, Srinath Byregowda, Cindy
Cao, KK Chan, Nick Chase, Nils Christensson, Dom Cobley, Teodorico Del
Rosario Jr, Phil Elwell, Shawn Guo, Gordon Hollingworth, Brand Hsieh,
Andy Hulbert, Walter Kho, Gerard Khoo, Saran Kumar, Yung-Ching Lee,
David Lewsey, Xizhe Li, Simon Long, Scott McGregor, James Mills, Alan
Morgan, Kalevi Ratschunas, Paul Rolfe, Matt Rowley, Akshaye Sama, Serge
Schneider, Shawn Shadburn, Mike Stimson, Stuart Thomson, Roger
Thornton, James Tong, James Turner, Luke Wren. If you're not on this
list and think you should be, please let me know, and accept my
apologies.
announcementsnewsraspberry pi 3
296 comments
1. Andrew Chalkley says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:01 am
Congrats!
Reply
+ Paul Newill says:
29th Feb 2016 at 9:05 am
Andrew Chalkley! Hello! Of all the millions of people's names
I could see, I see yours! Woohoo.
As for RPi, congratulations!
Reply
2. Ioannis says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:03 am
Hi,
Perfect, worth waiting for !!!!
Warmest Regards
Ioannis
http://www.pimodules.com
Reply
3. Anton says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:03 am
You are the best! Thank you!
Reply
4. Alan Mc says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:04 am
Bon anniversaire ! Where will we be in 20200229 ?
Bravo everybody.
Reply
5. Anton says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:06 am
You are the best! Thank you!
And the figures are truly mind-boggling: to you, Raspberry Pi, to
the next four(ty) years!
Reply
6. Zebu says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:06 am
Awesome news, I placed an order for one a few hours ago at RS.
they seem to have jumped the gun a little :p
Reply
7. MattHuisman.nz says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:06 am
WOOHOO!!
Reply
8. Winkleink says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:06 am
Congratulations.
Ordered mine.
Excited to see how it performs, especially with the Wifi/Bluetooth
not tied to the USB.
Reply
+ Winkleink says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:45 am
We have the podcast live now with an interview with Eben
Upton.
Talking about the Pi 3 and what it took to make it happen as
well as more details on software optimisation and some future
work.
http://thepipodcast.com/the-pi-podcast-16-raspberry-pi-3-speci
al-with-eben-upton/
Reply
+ Alasdair Allan says:
29th Feb 2016 at 11:12 am
Some performance benchmarks for the new Pi 3 at
http://makezine.com/2016/02/28/meet-the-new-raspberry-pi-3/.
You can compare them to other machines at
http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/dhrystone%20results.htm.
Reply
9. fattire says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:07 am
Congrats
Reply
10. Steve Foster says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:07 am
Happy birthday and thank you for making such a game-changing
computer. It has changed teaching in Computing for ever and has
already changed the lives of so many people around the world. Ooh -
and congrats on managing to bring out the Pi 3 today at such a god
price :-)
Reply
11. neomew says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:08 am
yay its out :D
Reply
12. W. H. Heydt says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:10 am
Congrats, thanks, and Happy Anniversary. I look forward to whatever
you release on 29 Feb 2020. (That's to keep you from getting
complacent!)
Reply
13. Web developet says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:11 am
Happy birthday! I'm so excited to use this on our next projects!
Weeeh!
Reply
14. Texy says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:12 am
Whoop!
Fantastic achievement.
Texy
Reply
15. The Raspberry Pi Guy says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:13 am
Awesome news! I've had a chance to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi 3
and review it! See here: https://youtu.be/Y2Z6b64eh2E
The Raspberry Pi Guy!
Reply
+ Richard says:
29th Feb 2016 at 9:21 am
Nice video, thanks for posting this.
Reply
o The Raspberry Pi Guy says:
29th Feb 2016 at 2:59 pm
Glad that you enjoyed the video!
Reply
16. neomew says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:14 am
happy birthday Raspberry pi :D
Reply
17. Jared Mauch says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:14 am
Is there a reason the ethernet was not upgraded to gigabit? Was the
wireless certification part of the project that resource consuming?
Newer datacenter switches are not supporting 100m speeds.
Reply
+ Texy says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:29 am
I'm pretty sure that 100% of educational establishments
support 100mb.
Texy
Reply
o james says:
29th Feb 2016 at 9:00 am
IIRC on the original Raspberry PI Ethernet Interface was
basically attached the the USB controller, which was (is
(?)) USB 2, which can only do 480 mbit, so Gigabit was
not possible.
I was crossing my fingers for Gigabit in this release.
Reply
# Peter den Haan says:
29th Feb 2016 at 10:14 am
Of course it's possible. Check Amazon; there are any
number of USB 2.0 gigabit ethernet adaptors on the
market. Of course, you won't be able to saturate the
network from a 480Mbps bus. But you can still do a
lot better than 100Mbps.
Reply
+ ian smith says:
29th Feb 2016 at 1:57 pm
and I would love to use many of them around my WANs as network
monitors/speed checkers but the 100mb interface thwarts this.
Next time please?
Ian
Reply
+ Jim Manley says:
29th Feb 2016 at 3:12 pm
@Jared_Mauch - What are you talking about, not supporting 100
Mbps speeds? That's so ridiculous that it's ... well,
ridiculous! Any Ethernet device will operate at whatever speed
it can and the switches will deal with whatever packets come
whenever they come, taking care of other circuits while
waiting for the slower interface to do its thing. Besides,
there aren't many datacenter switches connected directly to
Pii ... sheesh!
Getting beyond 100 Mbps on a shared network segment (which
most Pii are on, anyway), even with a USB Gbps Ethernet
dongle, won't get past 100 Mbps due to contention, and if
there's _anything_ else going on within the Pi's USB bus,
there's going to be contention there, too, see also
"chokepoint".
Reply
18. Jonathan Pallant says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:15 am
That's amazing guys. So much power! Surely you can't keep it up at
this rate? A very Happy Birthday to to.
Oh you really need to have a word with CPC and RS. Ordered mine at
6am and I've been looking at the ad since last week ;)
Reply
19. Herman says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:16 am
Congrats to the team for -- once again -- a very nice job, thank
you! And also, happy bierthday Rpi!
I was thinking of buying my 3th Rpi 2 B, that will -of course -- be
a Rpi 3 now.
Reply
+ Herman says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:31 am
Sorry for the typo. Bierthday ==> birthday.
Reply
20. Alejandro says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:18 am
what about the RAM?
Reply
+ Texy says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:33 am
1gig of RAM
Reply
o gitti says:
29th Feb 2016 at 8:31 am
I'm waiting for 2GB of RAM.
Reply
o Lada says:
29th Feb 2016 at 9:33 am
Any plans for a model with more RAM? It's usable a a
perfect low power always-on workstation now. I'd buy it
with more ram (2GB, maybe more) even for a higher price.
Anyway, fantastic work, thumbs up!
I've already ordered two from Farnell.
Reply
# James Hughes says:
29th Feb 2016 at 9:46 am
No plans. There is an architectural limitation with
the VC4 which means 1GB is the limit. Learn to write
less memory hungry code!
Reply
@ Vanfanel says:
29th Feb 2016 at 1:48 pm
This is a great response: back to code
optimization! No more code that eats up memory
as if we were in M$ world! :D
o Seaborg says:
29th Feb 2016 at 12:44 pm
Yeah, I understand the limits of VC4 but I would be
awesome to have more RAM 2G or even 4G to run smoothly
i.e. Ubuntu Mate
Reply
21. Jan Mrazek says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:18 am
Too bad element14 isn't selling it yet...
Reply
+ JAB_au says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:31 am
Yes waiting for element14 order page
Reply
22. Hans Otten says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:19 am
Four years ago I was amazed and on board this unstoppable train,
and many Pi's have entered my house. And it continues in a great
way! Congrats and see you next birthday in 4 years! RPi 6?
Reply
23. Aruna says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:20 am
Any idea how fast is the wireless lan? I am wondering whether it is
possible to run kodi without lan now
Reply
+ Micha says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:49 am
It seems to be a 802.11n-chip If I am not wrong...but already
"normal" Wlan with 54 Mbit(g) should reach ~2 Megabyte, enough
for me to watch even my hd-films over wlan without a problem.
Reply
24. Richard Sierakowski says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:20 am
An excellent evolutionary step. This provides a great flagship
system for the RasPi series and crucially maintains the option of
full 32 bit compatibility with the promise of 64 bit processing
enhancements.
Hopefully effort has gone into increasing the opensource mode of
the system hardware.
A truly great effort by all involved.
Richard
Reply
25. Chris Hansen says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:21 am
I will never stop being amazed at this device! Thank you for your
forward thinking for all of our youth and adults alike! I love
this!!! Chris-WO1T
Reply
26. Zac says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:23 am
Happy anniversary and I'm truly excited about this new Pi.
Hopefully over time we can all get 64 bit support everywhere we
can. Being able to retain the same price as the original Raspberry
Pi B is truly amazing. Four years and dollar for dollar you're
getting 10x the performance. Keep up the amazing work guys and
girls, there's no tech community like this one :)
Reply
27. Olof says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:24 am
I thought that you should release it on the 14th of March?
Reply
28. Archisman Panigrahi says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:25 am
What will be the advantages of the 64 bit processor?
Reply
+ Dutch_Master says:
29th Feb 2016 at 3:32 pm
That entirely depends on your application. Most home-coded
projects have little use for the increased computing
capabilities of 64 bit. Most beneficial will be video data
processing and multi-tasking applications on desktop systems.
Given that many people buy the RPi as a replacement for their
desktop, that's an important factor. I do hope the 64-bit
development chain is released soon by the Foundation.
Reply
29. Micha says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:26 am
Congratulations, and nice to see the new Pi!
Regarding Wlan/Bt, is it possible to connect an external antenna?
Otherwise I could imagine that a metal-case would be not so
good...or is it possible do disable the internal chip?
However - I want it :) Good work!
Reply
30. Alex Eames - RasPi.TV says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:28 am
Congratulations and Happy Birthday.
Raspberry Pi has literally changed many lives including mine. I'm
sure those concerned are extremely grateful. I know I am.
Thank you
Reply
31. Archisman Panigrahi says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:29 am
Is it still camera shy?
Reply
+ Alex Eames - RasPi.TV says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:31 am
No. See my video overview to see the new U16 with black shield
on it...
https://youtu.be/wTTa-24whdw
Reply
+ Ben Nuttall says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:31 am
No, a component swap fixes that issue :)
Reply
o Alasdair Allan says:
29th Feb 2016 at 10:25 am
Was interested to see that the BCM43438 radio wasn't
encapsulated though?
Reply
32. Lukas says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:29 am
still not enough RAM, it is cool that wifi is now integrated, but
the cpu boost is not usable without more RAM...
Reply
+ ColinD says:
29th Feb 2016 at 8:24 am
Lukas, In what was is the extra CPU "not usable" without extra
RAM? I can write lean code that performs highly complex maths
and hammers the CPU for instance.
Reply
+ Matt Hawkins says:
29th Feb 2016 at 8:35 am
You don't need extra RAM to take advantage of a faster CPU.
Reply
33. gregeric says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:30 am
Nice:-) SDIO for WiFi I assume, GPIO's 34-39 alt3? BT on second
serial port, 40/41?
First project: hack the hardware to use the 43438's FM receiver
too.
Reply
+ Liam Jackson says:
29th Feb 2016 at 9:20 am
I wondered this too, how are they hooked up (Eben said
sdio/uart, but not which GPIO)? Does it stop you using
anything on the hats (e.g. SDIO, UART?)
Reply
o gregeric says:
29th Feb 2016 at 11:22 am
HAT connector unchanged, save for a different serial
peripheral being mapped out to the same pins.
Reply
34. Michelle says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:30 am
Happy Birth Day
My new Raspberry Pi 3 is on the way to me.
https://jiffyshop.com.au/SBC/raspberry-pi/108-raspberry-pi-3.html
Reply
+ Bart Scheffer says:
29th Feb 2016 at 8:35 am
But thats for $66 in stat off the $35 the tell us here ???
Reply
35. Paul Webster says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:31 am
Well done all.
I've ordered mine from Pimoroni - although just spotted that they
are still selling with 2amp power supply rather than the newly
recommended 2.5 (depending on which peripherals are used wi it).
Reply
36. thomas says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:31 am
WHOO HOOOO, THIS IS FANTASTIC, INTEGRATED WIFI AND BLUETOOTH WILL
FREE UP TWO USB PORTS, TWO!!!
Reply
37. Tosa Saito says:
29th Feb 2016 at 7:33 am
Happy birthday and thank you for the exciting gift!!
We are looking forward to having it soon.
from Japan, KSYIC.com
https://raspberry-pi.ksyic.com/
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