Raspberry Pi just celebrated its sixth birthday[1]—that's six years since the launch of the original Raspberry Pi. Since then, it has released various new models, including the Pi 2, Pi 3, and Pi Zero. So far, 9 million Raspberry Pi 3s have been sold—and over 18 million Pis in total—and those numbers are likely to grow following today's announcement of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. This new Pi features:
- 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU
- Gigabit Ethernet (over USB)
- Dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth
- Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) pins
- Improved PXE[2] and USB booting
- Improved thermal management
This is a big update to the existing Pi 3, including a re-spin of the BCM2837 CPU (running faster at 1.4GHz), new dual-band wireless connectivity (so you can connect to both 2.4- and 5-GHz WiFi networks), better thermal control, and more. As always, you'll need an up-to-date Raspbian[3] SD card, but the new model is backwards-compatible with all previous models and runs the same operating systems and programs. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is available now at the usual price of $35.
Gigabit Ethernet and PoE
The Raspberry Pi has always suffered an Ethernet bottleneck, throttling network speeds over USB 2.0. The new 3B+ replaces the LAN9514 USB hub with a with a LAN7515 adding Gigabit Ethernet. It's still limited by USB 2.0 but gives a 3x LAN throughput increase, which will please a lot of Pi users with network-hungry applications in the home and in industrial applications.
The addition of four new pins offset from the main GPIO header provides support for Power-over-Ethernet. An official HAT (add-on board) has been designed to provide this feature natively, and it will be