
Raspberry Pi 3 on Sale - MarcScott
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-3-on-sale
======
schappim
What has changed:

\- Wifi Built-in

    
    
        - IEEE 802.11b/g/n support
        - A maximum transmit and receive rate of 150 Mbps
        - Supports both 20 MHz and 40 MHz channels
        - Supports Infrastructure mode, Wi-Fi Direct and soft-AP mode
        - Supports WPA, WPA2 (802.11i), AES/TKIP, IEEE 802.1X and WAPI
        - A maximum transmission power 15 dbm
        - Operating Frequency 2.4 MHz – 2.497 MHz
    

\- Bluetooth Built-in

\- New System on chip (BCM2837 reported to be 1.5x speed of previous gen)

\- Chip is now 64bit ARMv8 QUAD Core 64bit processor

\- MicroSD Card swapped out. Not more annoying spring ejection system that
breaks.

\- Position of status LEDs has changed (there is a chip antenna where they
used to be).

\- New power switching for 2.5Amp power supply.

What is the same:

\- Same USB/Ethernet controller

\- Same form factor

\- Same GPIO

Source (with images): [http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/raspberry-
pi-3-model-b-c...](http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-
changes/)

~~~
txdv
Too bad it still doesn't have SATA, USB3 and Gigabit Ethernet.But this is
already big step forward, wifi, bluetooth and a better cpu for the same price.
The next generation will look even more promising. Currently I am just using
my obsolete wifi dongle for my rasp

~~~
bubuga
> Too bad it still doesn't have SATA, USB3 and Gigabit Ethernet.

It costs $35 and comes with ethernet, wifi, and a quad-core processor.

Furthermore, it's fully supported in linux.

That's terribly awesome for what it is.

A decade ago you had to spend 50x that amount of cash to get a laptop with
those specs, without linux support.

No matter how you cut it, the Raspberry Pi 3 is not bad from any angle. At
all.

~~~
txdv
I'm not sayings its a bad deal, I just personally hoped for usb 3.0 or sata
for faster connected IO, or gigabit ethernet for faster remote IO

~~~
keenerd
You probably want a computer designed around performance instead of
"community". Check out the Odroid C2. It's got a 64 bit quad core CPU (just*
like the Pine and RPi3) but clocked at 2GHz. And has real gigabit. And has
twice as much ram. And can drive a 4k screen comfortably. Sadly no USB3. You
can get that, but in boards that cost $70.

The C2 goes on sale in like one or two days for $40. (edit: You can buy in now
on HK's website.) Kind of a childish move for the RPi Foundation to be making
so much noise about their new board right now, actually. (edit: Okay,
benbenben makes a fair and accurate point. Several boards, including the
first, have been released at the end of February.)

* Not entirely just like. It's an Amlogic chip instead of Broadcom or Allwinner. Amlogic is one of the few without blatant GPL abuse.

~~~
benbenben
_" Kind of a childish move for the RPi Foundation to be making so much noise
about their new board right now, actually."_

It's their fourth birthday, a pretty good time to release a new/updated
product, no?

~~~
downtide
1st birthday?

------
agumonkey
And a nice HaD review (including competitor boards)

[http://hackaday.com/2016/02/28/introducing-the-raspberry-
pi-...](http://hackaday.com/2016/02/28/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-3/)

ps: wanted to say the rpi team seems very smart in the regularity and
smoothness of their product delivery. A nice amount of changes, same price
point, reusable form factor, cute surprise annoucements (pizero). Kudos for
that.

~~~
antouank
> The Pine64 will be shipping out to backers shortly, but it’s already dead on
> arrival. I’m a backer of the Pine64 Kickstarter campaign, and I should have
> some commitment bias towards this cheap 64-bit computer. Even I must concede
> the Raspberry Pi 3 is the superior board.

How is that, since Pine64 will have same CPU, plus 2GB of RAM, and Gbit
ethernet.

~~~
voltagex_
The Pi will have a bigger community and more chance of mainline kernel
support. I wish other boards could compete but that community is everything.

~~~
makomk
More accurately, the Pi has a bigger community of vocal fans and press who'll
play up its accomplishments and shout down competitors and criticism of the
Pi. For example, notice how not having onboard WiFi doesn't matter when the Pi
lacks it, but is a big deal when it has it and its competitor doesn't. Also
how the Hackaday article spins it as a good thing that, four years later, the
Pi Foundation has released a board that's actually useable for the purpose
they were promoting it for all along. For those four years, any suggestion the
Pi wasn't usable for education was shouted down by fans and ignored by the
press, but now the Pi 3's out and they can spin it as a positive thing...

------
javipas
This is a new incredible feat from The Raspberry Pi foundation, and I'm
impressed by the modest media coverage there's been here and there. In fact, I
think we've got here a clear example of the curse of human expectations
([http://theunshut.com/2016/02/29/raspberry-pi-3-and-the-
curse...](http://theunshut.com/2016/02/29/raspberry-pi-3-and-the-curse-of-
human-expectations/)).

Having an (almost) complete PC for $35 with WiFi and the rest of its features
is something amazing that seems to be quite normal. It amazes (and saddens) me
how most people is unimpressed by this.

~~~
wernercd
When super computers... I mean smart phones... sit in the pocket of a majority
of people?

Where we are... compared to 20... 30... 40... years ago? Mind boggling.

I'll probably actually buy a Pi 3 (or 2... or 3) with this release because
I've been wanting some for awhile.

------
whiskers
We took a look at the new Pi 3 in our blog post here:
[http://blog.pimoroni.com/raspberry-pi-3/](http://blog.pimoroni.com/raspberry-
pi-3/)

We have them available shipping worldwide in our store!
[https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-
pi-3](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-3)

~~~
mrbill
Ordered! Cheaper (and faster) to have it shipped from the UK than from a US
seller!

Strangely enough, one of the RPi2s I bought last week was DOA (wouldn't boot
off a card that worked on an identical Pi2; red/green LEDs just stayed
solid).. So, how convenient!

~~~
pjc50
That's not really surprising, given they're made in the UK by a UK company
with UK-based distributors. :)

------
ralphc
The biggest "shut up and take my money" feature is the built-in wifi. Not that
it wasn't easy to add wifi before, but this gives a true standard that special
use cases can be built around. For example, using a Pi as a Tor bridge in my
house. There have been plenty of articles on how to do that, but if the
article code uses version 2.01 of a chipset and you have 2.02 you were
screwed, not going to work, just give up.

~~~
giarc
It's big because it also free's up a USB port that was often taken up by a
wifi dongle.

------
gchokov
Can anybody actually share useful projects with Raspberry? Yeah I have links
to some "common and cool" projects that you can find over the first page in
Google, but there's rarely something really useful..

~~~
erichocean
We used about 50 of them on a job for Nike earlier this month, reading from a
USB-attached credit card reader from MagTek and sending the data to the server
over Wi-Fi and in the streetcar, over Bluetooth LE to a co-located iPad Pro
(and from there we used its cellular connection to talk to the server). Each
Pi worked alongside an iPad Pro as part of an on-site digital retail
experience called SNKRS XPRESS where we replicated Nike's "SNKRS" app on the
iPad Pro and people bought shoes off the app and picked them up immediately.
Four simultaneous locations: Toronto, New York, Chicago, and Santa Monica
(i.e. Los Angeles).

Other fun tech: Node.js on the Pis, NaCl for all crypto, TypeScript on the
server (and Node.js), Stripe for handling payments, GraphQL for query handling
for the iOS clients, and we used QR code display and reading to distribute
public keys during setup. The Bluetooth LE data transfer code between Node.js
and iOS was also a nice bit of work by my friend Erik van der Tier in the
Netherlands.

[0] (Warning: autoplay.) [http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/02/10/nike-snkrs-
xpress-to...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/02/10/nike-snkrs-xpress-
toronto_n_9205924.html)

[1] [http://hypebeast.com/2016/2/nike-snkrs-xpress-pop-up-
nyc](http://hypebeast.com/2016/2/nike-snkrs-xpress-pop-up-nyc)

[2] [http://weartesters.com/nike-snkr-xpress-experience-
recap/](http://weartesters.com/nike-snkr-xpress-experience-recap/)

~~~
hrrsn
This seems genuinely interesting. Any more details about the tech side?

~~~
logicallee
hahaha, this comment is hilarious. Your parent comment shared an x-ray level
of detail about the tech including naming the credit card reader model
(MagTek), and a complete inventory of their technical stack ("Node.js on the
Pis, NaCl for all crypto, TypeScript on the server (and Node.js), Stripe for
handling payments, GraphQL for query handling for the iOS clients") and
technical implementaiton details (QR code display and reading to distribute
public keys during setup, Bluetooth LE data transfer code between Node.js on
the Pis and iOS) in addition to the point of the whole solution ("sending the
data to the server over Wi-Fi and in the streetcar, over Bluetooth LE to a co-
located iPad Pro, and from there we used its cellular connection to talk to
the server.")

What more details could you possibly want? He's gone above and beyond in
sharing.

Thanks, erichocean

------
digi_owl
Dunno why this took so long to dawn on me, but here we have 1.2GHz, quad core,
64-bit, computer with wifi, bluetooth, multiple USB ports, and ethernet.

And it is PASSIVELY cooled!

~~~
driverdan
> And it is PASSIVELY cooled!

So is every phone. The fact that it's $35 is the impressive part.

~~~
digi_owl
Yeah i know. But most phones have barely a single micro-USB port.

~~~
lmz
You can get passively cooled netbooks with an Intel chip now. Mine's a Celeron
N2840. Runs okay for everyday use.

~~~
phamilton
The new macbook is passively cooled.

~~~
hatsunearu
It's also thermally throttled heavily.

------
mschuster91
What also has changed: no I2S connector for audio chips any more, and I had
hoped for a proper 3-lane I2S to be able to do 5.1 HQ audio without relying on
either the crappy USB bus itself or cheap quality USB interfaces.

Not to mention that I2S sound is far less workload on the CPU than USB sound.

Oh, and why doesn't the Wifi/BT antenna have an SMA connector for external
antennas, e.g. directional antennas?!

~~~
antocv
Doesnt HDMI audio provide as good quality as any i2s connector? Or do you just
need i2s for interfacing with your own microcontrollers/older recieviers,
which dont necessarily have hdmi (and thus copyright compliance, making it
more expensive)?

Last I read Raspberry Pi should allow for 5.1 hdmi passthrough or at least
DTS.

~~~
mschuster91
HDMI audio requires an extractor (so one more wall wart + device), and I'm
using a Pi2 for home cinema. And I'm one of those with an "old" HiFi setup
without digital input, just analog.

~~~
nl
So use an old RPi? Or a Model B?

------
72deluxe
Typically, this is announced the day my Raspberry Pi 2 turns up....

~~~
FilterSweep
Haha, very typical - Same thing just happened to me, the first HN Rumor post I
saw regarding it was one week after I received mine from the post.

But all is not lost, the RPi2 is quite performant and I'd still wait on early
adopters to report on potential overheating when under a heavy workload. RPi3
Might be approaching the higher-end ODROID (XU3/4) in cooling fan necessity.

~~~
72deluxe
I have mine in a Flirc metal case and it is fine. I do not put it under heavy
workloads, but the Flirc comes with a thermal pad and attempts to make some of
the heat get piped to the case body.

------
thepiwo
With better USB/Ethernet and 2GB Ram I'd be sold

~~~
jmnicolas
What's your use case for 2GB of ram ?

~~~
72deluxe
Running Java apps? I jest, apologies.

~~~
xedarius
That's my reason for wanting 2GB.

------
kayoone
Any insights on why it took 3 years from RPI v1 to v2 and now v3 is released
in less than a year? Not complaining, just curious. Is it just because they
are so much bigger now ?

~~~
rasz_pl
I think Broadcom finally realized they have something beneficial on their
hands with millions of users and vibrant community. Pee gives them free beta
testing of new SoCs. Afaik this is first armv8 from broadcom ever, they
announced Vulcan almost 3 years ago and still didnt ship anything. Excellent
linux support and great name recognition also count for something.

------
rootbear
Part of me wishes this had been named the Model 3.14...

------
jokoon
I wonder if they're planning to also put wifi on the rpi zero, or if they just
can't.

From the pictures, it seems there is no visibly added component from rpi2 to
rpi3, so I guess wifi could be added on the rpi0 ?

I mean wifi is really all I need, I don't need to plug so much USB peripherals
or ethernet to such a computer, since everything can be done in SSH.

We really live in wonderful times. I wonder if the RPi foundation will get
enough momentum to even build some more advanced stuff like a cheap laptop.
That's the only missing link to this awesome project. There already is a
touchscreen, but I can't see solutions with a clean casing that can include a
screen and a smallish keyboard.

~~~
spaceisballer
They are planning on adding wifi to the Pi A+. Says in their FAQ.

------
anderspitman
64 bit A53 and built in wireless. Fantastic. Can't wait to see how these turn
out and what Hardkernel's answer will be.

~~~
mappu
Hardkernel have the ODROID-C2 in beta for a release in two days' time for
40USD -
[http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=18683](http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=18683)

Compared to the RPi3, this extra 5USD gets you gigabit ethernet, 2GB DDR3,
higher clock speed, and HDMI 2.0 capable of 4K60.

~~~
saghul
Raspberry Pi kinda won the race not because it had superior hardware, but
because of the community it sapwn. You have an order of magnitude more content
online about the Pi than the competitors.

~~~
anderspitman
I think there's still a market for more powerful devices that don't provide as
much hand holding. I agree though the community aspect of the pi is a huge
draw, especially when it comes to fixing issues and more esoteric projects.

------
lispython
About two years ago, I had a chance to ask Eben Upton if there would be a new
platform like Arduino and Raspberry PI, what characteristics the new platform
should have? And he said:

> There's scope for something very powerful (almost PC-like) in the $70 price
> range. If I was starting a new venture today, this is where I'd aim.

There is very powerful project like Bunnie Huang's Novena [1], but just the
board will cost $550.

[1] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-
kosagi/novena](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena)

~~~
ac29
In a handful of ways the Pi3 is actually more powerful than the novena -- at
1/10th the price.

------
azinman2
Where to buy in the US? All the sites seem to be UK

~~~
reacharavindh
Looks like these guys ship to the US for < $5 (I just tried an US Address -
did not actually buy one)

[http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-
pi-3-model-b](http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b)

Cheers!

------
nivertech
Anybody can suggest what accessories, case/enclosure and SD card are needed?

I prefer to buy a kit.

They list RPi 3 kit [1], but it's just list of old and new items, so it's not
very clear.

[1] [http://uk.farnell.com/buy-raspberry-pi?ICID=I-HP-LB-
feb16-ra...](http://uk.farnell.com/buy-raspberry-pi?ICID=I-HP-LB-
feb16-raspberry-pi3)

~~~
blowski
!SPEAKER WARNING! I had mine turned on full blast and now need a camomile tea.

------
lifeisstillgood
So my first, totally picky question, is - is the onboard wifi (woo!!) using a
free and open driver in Debian?

That would be awesome-er

~~~
kingosticks
It's the same wifi chipset as the official wifi dongle, the BCM43143 (source:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13825](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13825)).

This chipset is supported by the open-source brcmfmac driver is available from
the brcm80211 module of the linux kernel package, maintained upstream by the
linux kernel community (source
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx))

~~~
dublinben
That still relies on proprietary firmware on the actual chip itself.

~~~
kingosticks
True:
[http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-f...](http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-
firmware.git/log/brcm/brcmfmac43143-sdio.bin)

Either way, it's not really that interesting since you cannot boot the
Rapsberry Pi without proprietary blobs anyway. I guess the important thing is
that it'll work out out the box.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I did not know the whole could not boot without proprietary blobs - can you
expand?

------
WillieStevenson
I just bought the Raspberry Pi 2 less than 1 week ago thinking it was about
time to upgrade. WTH.

~~~
rb808
Especially as the FAQ still says: As of Feb 2015 there probably wont be a new
model in the next 2-3 years.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#generalFuture](https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#generalFuture)

------
keenerd
> 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.

So for now it is a "64 bit" system on paper only?

~~~
JosephRedfern
Raspbian isn't the only OS available for the Pi. Also, a 32bit Userland
doesn't mean you can't run 64bit software, does it? Doesn't it just suggest
that pre-installed applications (and apt repositories) are 32bit?

~~~
keenerd
I asked around. It is likely you would need a chroot or at least special
multilib/multiarch packages installed. The Debian Wiki has more details:
[https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port](https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port)

------
Jedd
Great news indeed - though it looks like we're still committed to Raspbian?

As much as I love the work the guys behind that have done, is the move to a
native Debian distro for this architecture hamstrung by specifications, or
something else?

~~~
makomk
As far as I know, the main thing hamstringing native Debian support is that
the binary blob required to boot any of the Pi's is not DFSG-compliant so
Debian won't ship images for the Pi. The second biggest thing is that you
still need a custom non-mainline kernel.

~~~
flowless
Kernel support improved a lot and we now have
[https://pignus.computer/](https://pignus.computer/) running mainline kernel.
Graphics and camera support are still missing but we'll eventually get there
with 4.5 kernel.

------
mkj
I wonder how far the clock speed needs to increase further to be usable for
x86-64 emulation?

Sure you can recompile, but docker/sandstorm.io/etc type binary packages would
be nice to run as-is.

~~~
timthorn
Take a look at Eltechs' tooling - you can already do usable emulation for
certain classes of software.

------
sheldor
Can this decode and play 1080p H.265 videos? I know it can't do it with the
built in chip (hardware rendering), but I'm asking if its cpu is capable of
doing so.

~~~
vrodic
Kodi struggles with H265/FHD on Rpi2, but I'm hopeful this one will make it.

Any other suggestions on hackable and cheap H265 capable machines?

~~~
keenerd
The Odroid C2 is $40 and can do 4k h265 at 60fps.

------
IgorPartola
Does it still not include a crypto instruction set? Last time I tried to run
anything crypto-heavy on an RPi it slowed to a crawl.

~~~
fanf2
Yes the cortex A53 supports the crypto instruction set extensions.

------
rb808
Are there any other more powerful boards that are USB powered?

I'm thinking of using this as a small PC on my monitor - like an All-In-One.
RaspPi is perfect as USB powered, things like a NUC need an extra power plug.
Would be nice to have something more powerful though, Compute Stick is the
only alternative I know of, am I missing something?

~~~
jdhawk
There are the ODROID systems, which are still ARM based.

I've heard a lot about the ODROID-C2, which people rave about.

[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G145457216438)

------
weatherlight
Now that there's wifi support. Using Pi's to experiment with cluster computing
just got a whole lot easier. :)

------
ausjke
This looks awesome.

I hope it has SATA though. In fact among all the "popular" ARM chips, only
iMX6 from NXP/Freescale and A20 from Allwinner provided SATA interface.
Marvell used to do ARM/SATA and now it's hard to find those chips used in any
open designs.

------
cm2187
I presume it starts to be powerful enough to run Windows RT. If Windows RT
still even exists?

~~~
voltagex_
The 2 runs Windows 10 IoT, but that's not Windows as you know it.

~~~
cm2187
The only problem I have with Windows RT or Windows IOT is that there won't be
any driver for any USB devices (in particular any probe). I am not sure what
most people use RaspberryPis for but I found them useful as temperature
loggers. And I don't feel brave enough to write my own driver...

~~~
voltagex_
Any reason to use Windows on this over a Linux distro?

~~~
cm2187
For a hobbyist who is a windows user, linux isn't exactly user friendly. Every
simple thing takes time. I managed to get my thing working with a little bit
of python but it took me a day to do something that would take me 10min in
.net and windows.

I don't think regular linux users realise the importance of a good UI to make
linux go mainstream and be accessible. No UI for the firewall, no UI for
scheduled jobs (CRON), no UI to give the right permissions to enable some
script to execute. Lots of acronym based commands that are anything but
intuitive.

As is, my experience of linux is that it is a "RTFM or die" system.

[edit] and also the python 2 vs python 3 thing, which technically isn't
linux's fault but that I wouldn't have to deal with if I could use .net. This
was my first experience with python and I lost two hours on a bug to realise
that python 2 wasn't compatible with SNI. And then you have several versions
of python installed and to run anything you have to specify the right version
and sub-version of python in the command. This was an awful experience.

~~~
pjc50
I don't think Windows users appreciate the importance of a good command line
accessible over SSH for managing headless systems.

I don't mean to be too snarky about it, but it's a different environment and
you're complaining that it's not as easy as the one you're familiar with.
"Intuitive" is difficult to quantify; the Windows interface has changed
repeatedly in the 7 -> 8 -> 10 era while the basic command line interface
hasn't, so once you learn it it's not likely to be obsoleted. There _are_
Linux UIs with all of the stuff you mention - GNOME has always targeted that
market.

.NET has its own versioning pain with the .NET frameworks across different
versions of Windows. I think it will eventually become more popular on Linux,
but only once trust of Microsoft has slowly been rebuilt. Having an open
source System.Windows.Forms would help too.

(Professionally I'm a Windows CE developer at the moment, which is a little
weird from a Linux background)

~~~
cm2187
I think the ideal system has an intuitive and exhaustive GUI, but where
everything can be scriptable.

And a more than ideal system would give you the way to go from GUI to
scripting easily. I.e. in any control panel you would have a button at the top
that if you click, will make some command windows appear below the current
window, which would show you the command line equivalent of anything that you
do using the GUI.

I am not arguing against having a scriptable OS. I am saying that a GUI makes
things a lot easier to understand intuitively, being able to observe the state
of the system visually and making it clear what are all the possible options
from a given point.

~~~
pjc50
That would be great; I get the impression that Microsoft are very very slowly
moving towards that with Powershell and Powershell ISE.

------
krylon
I was thinking of getting a second Pi only recently, this makes the decision a
lot easier.

I got my first one hoping to tinker with it a little, but it ended up hooked
to my TV and running OpenELEC. So here's to hoping the second time will be
more tinker-y.

------
azinman2
Is the Bluetooth and wifi part of the SoC or at least get a decent bus? The
pi's usb is known for suckage, and if the networking could be greatly improved
(especially latency) that would be an amazing improvement.

~~~
dan1234
Yes, the Bluetooth & WLAN now use the SDIO interface[0]

[0][https://youtu.be/Y2Z6b64eh2E?t=172](https://youtu.be/Y2Z6b64eh2E?t=172)
(around 2m50)

------
philfrasty
I always wonder why they do not (as well) sell directly to the consumer but
through their distributors. I mean acquiring the customer yourself and then
selling through someone else. Why?

~~~
moonbug
Because that's not their business.

------
grondilu
> Integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1

that will make setup even easier!

------
trampi
Does it support hardware-decoding of H264 High 10 Profile (10-bit)? The RPi 2
has no hardware support for decoding this AFAIK and is therefore not able to
play such videos.

~~~
kingosticks
The videocore gpu has not changed. So if the previous gen doesn't have
hardware support then nor will this.

~~~
khedoros
It's clocked at a higher frequency, and the video codecs seem to be built in
software that runs on part of the GPU that isn't directly user-accessible
(early builds of the firmware supported fewer codecs). So, the question would
be if it _is_ hardware limitation, or if it's just a case that hasn't been
implemented in the firmware blob yet. Maybe it wasn't implemented before
because the hardware wasn't fast enough to do it at the lower clock.

~~~
kingosticks
I think we'd have seen more products using the Videocore if it had the
potential for anything vaguely interesting (like this). But here's to hoping.

~~~
khedoros
That may be. That portion of the chip is completely closed (no public specs or
compiler), so I'm just speculating based on inputs and outputs to a blackbox
system.

I _do_ know that I've seen people trick the thing (VC4 on Pi2) into pushing
out 4K video at about 20fps and decoding 3 h.264 videos at once. Playing a 4th
video caused a lot of visual artifacts. So it _has_ potential for more than
it's usually used for. There could be a low-level assumption of 8 bits per
sample, or some other constraint that we don't know about. Or it could be as
simple as Broadcom not being interested in marketing the chip toward higher-
end uses like the 10bit profiles. Without signing an NDA and ordering 6-7
digits worth of chips, I think we can only speculate.

------
taurath
I also just bought a pi 2 - integrated wireless sounds great!

------
glastra
So... $35, but all _official_ (as in linked from the original site) shops are
selling it at 30 GBP (41.63 USD).

~~~
gabble
As far as I can tell $35 is approximately £26 ex VAT which is then 20%
additional cost for UK customers i.e the £30 prices your seeing at most UK
resellers, aimed at UK customers.

~~~
glastra
You're right. They should probably point this out in the blog post itself
right next to the price.

------
rcknr
Is there any info regarding that header on the other side of the board, just
on the back of HDMI connector?

~~~
whiskers
It's the VideoCore JTAG header used for debug and development - it's not
intended for end user use.

------
rcarmo
Nice, but I'm going to wait until the amount of RAM catches up. That would be
next logical step now.

~~~
rasz_pl
ram upgrade would be nice, but imo speed is more important. SoC is still too
slow to run anything that would need more than 1GB, but bandwidth is stretched
pretty thin as it is ,shared with gpu - fullhd on 2 monitors with VGART666
already saturates mem controller.

also fast IO would be nice, one pcie lane or usb 3.0.

------
voltagex_
Any idea where to buy in Canada (BC)? I'm not sure whether this is subject to
import tax.

~~~
franey
Newark is the element14 partner (subsidiary?) in Canada:
[https://canada.newark.com](https://canada.newark.com)

------
jakozaur
Great move, given that some many rapsberry pi starter kits got wifi adapter on
usb.

------
ekevjn
i live in Viet Nam, really exited to buy one but seem like impossible

~~~
voltagex_
Will Element14 ship to you?

------
viperscape
"this provides a 50-60% increase in performance in 32-bit mode"

I don't understand this. How does a 64 bit processor increase speeds for 32
bit? Or is this referring to an increase over 64 bit numbers in 32bit mode?

~~~
reynoldsbd
There are several changes to the SoC, not just the addition of 64-bit support.
They increased clock speed and made other architectural improvements (e.g.
better instruction pipelining) resulting in these numbers.

------
phkahler
What ever happened to Wayland / Maynard on the Pi?

------
guyzero
Hopefully they release them outside Australia soon!

~~~
anexprogrammer
They're on UK RS too, and showing in searches, so probably globally.

Not showing at Farnell yet though, probably in 1.5hrs.

[http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-
deve...](http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-
kits/8968660/)

~~~
guyzero
Yeah, as I figured it eventually rolled out to all the stores as the business
day started.

------
dtjones
Have one major concern: Can the upgraded cpu and architecture handle more N64
games on retropie, specifically GoldenEye?

~~~
khedoros
They're claiming the Pi3 benchmarks at 10x the speed of the Pi1, and the Pi2
hit 6x, so they're claiming that the Pi3 will be 166% the speed of the Pi2 at
doing at least a few things. Would that be enough of a speed boost to get
reasonable framerates, from what you've seen?

------
leaveyou
raspberry pi 3 at 35$ wow !!!

checks price in Europe.. 46 euro,

hmm, I think I'll pass..

------
mrtronique
wow cool

------
choffee
1Gb of RAM. What a shame. I wonder if there will be a 3+ any time soon. If
these had 4Gb RAM they might be a serious bit of kit.

~~~
gambiting
I has 8Gb of ram. Unless you mean 1GB.

------
unicornporn
On sale? I gave up. In the blog post I can't seem to find any direct link to a
store. I also looked in the store here:
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-
pi-3-model-b/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b/)
and only found a link to:
[http://www.alliedelec.com/](http://www.alliedelec.com/) I did a few searches
in the store and didn't find the Pi 3. Looks like a fantastic little machine,
but subpar PR for this sale.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Halfway down the page:

"Raspberry Pi 3 is available to buy today from our partners element14 [1] and
RS Components [2]"

[1] [https://www.element14.com/community/community/raspberry-
pi](https://www.element14.com/community/community/raspberry-pi) [2]
[http://uk.rs-
online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberry...](http://uk.rs-
online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi)

~~~
unicornporn
On element14 it's $43.462 for me, not $35. If i pick for "personal use" on rs-
online.com it takes me to another list of resellers with varying prices. A
little confusing.

------
willvarfar
Is this more suited to robotics?

The main stumbling block for the previous Pis was a lack of real-time OS e.g.
RTLinux port.

This was discussed recently on Proggit recently
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3zf04e/where_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3zf04e/where_are_all_the_raspberry_pi_robots/)
after I blogged about how I couldn't find a Pi robot kit to buy my kids last
year:
[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/136598180858/wher...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/136598180858/where-
are-all-the-raspberry-pi-robots)

