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Having seen an official part/order number (SC14012 or SC14014 with 16GB micro SD Noobs software) including what looks to be a real photographic image in a recent (2016/02/27 "Computer World" March 2016 issue) weekly mail-out from CPC the Retail Consumer arm of Farnell, who are one of the Official UK retailer of Raspberry Pis I am asking what differences there actually are between it and the 2B?

Side by side photo of upper board surface of Pi 3 and Pi 2Side by side photo of lower board surface of Pi 3 and Pi 2

From the information I am able to glean from that image and the accompanying text:

  • The processor is a 1.2 GHz Arm7 BroadComm BCM2837 (c.f. 900MHz BCM2986 for the 2B and the BCM2835 {at either 700 MHz, 900 MHz or 1 GHz} for every other model before) It is a 64-bit core whereas previous RPis have a 32-bit core.

  • Wifi and Bluetooth LE is provided by a BroadComm BCM43438 device (not previously reported BCM43143) that has been placed on the bottom of the PWB (between low-number pins end of GPIO connector and SDCard slot) with an on-board antenna on the top - there may be pads in position for an external connection but if fitting such a thing was to be attempted some other components (SMD links/capacitors) would have to be added/removed - there is not any official support for this and it could possibly mess with the regulatory approval of FCC et al. This omission may become an issue for those wanting to enclose the unit in a metal or metallised box!

  • Improved power management - "...allowing it to power more demanding USB peripherals."

  • The "Act" and "Pwr" LEDs have been moved to the other side of the DSI connector compared to the 2B and the two pin "run/reset" header seems to have moved from adjacent to the DSI connector to the other side of the 40 Pin GPIO connector between that and the outermost Pair of Stacked USB connectors. This is to provide the real-estate on the board for the antenna for the Wifi/Bluetooth.

  • I failed to spot that J5 is the JTAG header used to flash the GPU core and is identical to the RPi 2!

So: I would expect different (better) Power Supply requirements and different/extra drivers for the WiFi (but they may already be on hand for previous users of the Official RPi WiFi adapter)!

What else differences are users aware of in practice?

SlySven
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3 Answers3

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This posting shows the March cover of The MagPi which claims that the Pi-3 is 64 bit.

I sure hope that it has USB-3

enter image description here

HeatfanJohn
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Comparing the 3B to the original 2B, the following differences are encountered:

A boardcom bluetooth/wifi chip has been added connected to the SoC over SDIO (for the wifi) and serial (for the bluetooth).

The LEDs and run header have been moved to make space for the wifi/bluetooth circuit (on the bottom) and it's antenna (on the top).

The SoC has been replaced with a new model that sigificantly increases the clockspeed and replaces the A7 cores with A53 cores. Initially only 32-bit kernels were available but later 64-bit ones also became available.

Some time after the 3B was released a new revision of the 2B was released that had the newer SoC from the 3B.

Peter Green
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Farnell kindly provided a brief pdf.

Edited version of Farnell's information sheet for the RPi3B

SlySven
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Stu
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