On the fourth anniversary of the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi 3 has been released. It's on sale now for $35 (the same price as the Pi 2), and features a nice boost in clock speed.
A custom-hardened 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 takes over from the old 900MHz 32-bit processor. This makes for a 33 percent increase in clock speed, and a 50-60 percent increase in performance in 32-bit mode over its predecessor, and a factor of 10 over the original.
The Raspberry Pi 3 comes with integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1 support, and has complete compatibility with the first two models.
At launch, the Pi 3 will be using the same 32-bit Raspbian userland that is currently in use on the other Raspberry Pi devices, but over the next few months the company will investigate whether it will be worth moving to a 64-bit mode.
The Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 will still be on sale for $20 and $35 respectively.
