Four years ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Raspberry Pi Model B. Today it publicized the new Raspberry Pi 3. Equipped with a WiFi Module (802.11n), Bluetooth 4.1 and a 64bit Cortex-A54 CPU with four 1.2Ghz Cores. It’s the fastest Raspberry Pi available to date.
The form-factor stayed almost the same, the only change was the position of the status LEDs, that had to make room for a new ceramic antenna. Old cases should still fit, besides the now covered LEDs.
The Raspberry Foundation speaks of a 50-60% performance gain due to the new CPU. If that still holds in real live is to be seen. The latest Raspberry Pi was already fast enough for media center activities. The new one there four should run even smoother as and media center. Maybe the Pi is now even fast enough to work as a thin client. Given that no longer a hub is needed to connect a USB dongle and USB keyword / mouse dongle.
The WiFi module and Bluetooth should also be interesting for DIY enthusiasts, connecting their sensors and actors via the Bluetooth 4.1 low energy profile.
The new Raspberry Pi 3 can already be orderd. But it is to be expected, as always, that it is pretty quick out of stock for the first couple of weeks.
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