The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is here and we are delighted to announce the immediate availability of Ubuntu MATE 15.10 for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B!
Many thanks to BenNuttall, Simon West, Liz Upton and Phil Elwell from the Raspberry Pi Foundation for providing Martin Wimpress with a Raspberry Pi 3 and engineering assistance over the weekend.
The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, the RAM remains 1GB and the USB and wired Ethernet port arrangement and configuration are unchanged.
Here is what is new to the Raspberry Pi 3:
- Improved performance thanks to a Broadcom BCM2837 64-bit Quad Core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU running at 1.2GHz.
-
Integrated 802.11 b/g/n Wireless LAN (BCM43438) accessed via SDIO using the Arasan MMC controller.
- This requires that the Broadcom MMC controller is used for the SD card using the relatively new and recently revamped
bcm2835-sdhost
driver.
- This requires that the Broadcom MMC controller is used for the SD card using the relatively new and recently revamped
- Integrated Bluetooth 4.0 (Classic & Low Energy) (BCM43438 again) is presented as a modem via a serial UART (two-wire - no hardware flow control) with the BlueZ software stack running in H4 mode.
- Improved power management with a 2.5 Amp power supply.
- A new chip antenna is where status LEDs were previously located. The status LEDs are still on the board, right next to the microSD card slot.
The Ubuntu MATE image we've prepared supports the integrated Wifi on the Raspberry Pi 3 but support for the integrated Raspberry Pi 3 Bluetooth is still in progress and we hope to enable full support via an update very soon.
Find out more in the release announcement