Raspberry Pi 3 With 64-Bit CPU, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi Launched at $35

The Raspberry Pi foundation has launched the third version of its popular low-power Raspberry Pi development platform, the Raspberry Pi 3. It's priced at $35, the same as the Raspberry Pi 2 mini computer unveiled last year, but adds a much request feature - integrated Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth connectivity.

Raspberry Pi Founder Eben Upton in a blog post announced that the new launch commemorates the company's fourth birthday. Upton also detailed that the company has so far shipped 8 million Raspberry Pi units, including three million Raspberry Pi 2 units. The company claims that Raspberry Pi 2 is the "UK's all-time best-selling computer."

Raspberry Pi 3 will go on sale starting Monday from element14 and RS Components, and other resellers. The company also announced that at launch they will be using the same 32-bit Raspbian userland that have been used on other (previous generation) Raspberry Pi devices. The company will decide whether to move to the 64-bit mode over the next few months after investigating.

Some of the highlights of the Raspberry Pi 3 include a 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor which the company says has 10x performance of the Raspberry Pi 1. Despite being available at the same price as Raspberry Pi 2, the Raspberry Pi 3 will feature integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1. It will be complete compatible with Raspberry Pi 1 and Raspberry Pi 2. For Raspberry Pi 3, the company says that Broadcom supports a new SoC, the BCM2837.

"The 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU complex has been replaced by a custom-hardened 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53.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," said Upton.