Well, we're launching another product.
This is Raspberry Pi 3B+.
And this is Roger, who designed it. Roger, what's new with Raspberry Pi 3+?
So, quite a lot! I'll start in the centre. We've got the same processor as before, but we've
got a new package for it, and that allows us to add this heat spreader as well.
So that's given us the chance to boost it from 1.2GHz to 1.4GHz.
This is still BCM2837, right?
Still 2837, just in a new package to increase power integrity and give us this -
- and better thermal performance as well.
Yes. In this corner we've done a lot of connectivity updates, so we've now got 5GHz and 2.4GHz
wifi, Bluetooth 4.2 and Bluetooth LE. We've got a new dual-band antenna from
the same people who did the one on Zero W, from Proant.
So, Raspberry Pi 3 has a chip antenna along the edge there, and people noticed that
Zero W has better wifi - although it doesn't have a chip antenna, it's got a PCB antenna -
it's actually got generally better wifi performance than Pi 3, yeah?
Yeah. And we took all that learning from Proant and we put it onto this board. So this one's
a dual-band antenna, so it adds some extra capacitors in there for tuning the cavity.
Equally good performance, if not better.
Cool. And it's in a metal box.
Yes. So this is mainly around compliance. The idea is that having the shield around
the radio circuitry allows us to call it a module, and so the whole board is actually
certified as a radio module -
- like one of those little radio modules, except with all of the rest of a Raspberry
Pi on it.
Yes, so that means that we can say that - when someone builds a product around Raspberry
Pi, they can avoid a lot of this compliance testing, because they can take our reports,
because it's a module, and just hand them on.
Previously, people were having to go back to - were having to do everything from scratch,
right? Obviously people have been using the Integrator Programme, we have the Raspberry
Pi Integrator Programme, but people were still having to redo all - once you add new components
to it, having to redo all of their testing. Here, although it's got a radio on it, you
only need to do the non-radio bits - you only need to redo the non-radio bits of the testing,
right, the unintentional radiation and the immunity testing. It's a factor of ten, right?
Pretty much, in cost.
Yeah, it's a massive -
- in terms of cost and effort, it's roughly a factor of ten saving. So that's kind of
fun. That's the wireless end of the connectivity package; what's happened on the wired end,
on the other corner of the board?
So we've changed our southbridge to another product from Microchip, and this has given
us much faster Ethernet, so we're seeing two to three times the previous performance.
We're not using the G word?
We're not, but it's sort of pseudo-Gigabit Ethernet!
It's Gigabit Ethernet, so at the physical level it's Gigabit Ethernet, but it's still
bridged over USB 2.0, so you're seeing probably a maximum of 250-300Mbps on the line.
Which is a great bump from what it was before.
Yes, that's really healthy output.
You'll notice we've grown an extra header up here. Part of the change for the new Ethernet
was that we added in Power-over-Ethernet transformers into here. So these are the taps from this
transformer. This will allow you to plug in a HAT board that we'll be launching soon,
that basically allows you to power your board over Ethernet.
48V coming in on the Ethernet cable, comes up through that header, onto a HAT which regulates
it down to 5V and then injects it back in through the GPIO connector.
And also adds a fan, should you need one.
And we're kind of hoping, I guess, that people are going to, for a lot of industrial use
cases, maybe some signage use cases, this reduces the amount of - you don't need to
have a - you can network boot, and obviously we're much better at network booting in this
version, we've rolled up all of the bug fixes, Gordon's rolled up all the bug fixes, from
a year or two of Ethernet booting into the boot ROM inside the 2837. So you can stick
this at the end of a piece of powered Ethernet and that's really the only thing you need
to run your Pi. It should be good for some of our industrial and signage customers.
Yes. It goes back to the compliance side of things, learning how people are deploying
these things, and trying to make it better for everyone.
I guess the other thing - it's kind of a neater-looking board, right, it's a tidier-looking board;
things seem to have changed down in this corner next to the power jack.
Yes, so we've had a custom power supply from Maxlinear designed, so this is a four switched-mode
power supply. So it's I2C-controllable, and basically hoovers up a lot of the shrapnel
on the board of the discrete LDOs that we had in the past.
So we originally had separate switchers: we had a dual switcher for 1V8 and 3V3, and those
were fixed switchers; we had an I2C-controllable switcher for the _ voltage, um... which back
in the day, on Pi 2, of course, was the product that gave us the Xenon Death Flash!
And then we had an LDO for an SDRAM rail, which is now a switcher?
We had two LDOs for the SDRAM, we had an audio LDO...
And lots of that's been sucked into that corner. So this is why it kind of looks tidier. And
of course that's... because this switcher has better static regulation accuracy, it
has a better load-step performance, and both of those then turn into - those are both contributors,
along with the changes that have happened in the main chip, those are things that contribute
directly to that 200MHz uplift in frequency.
Yes, it's all resulted in a much better-performance product.
Yeah, yeah. I like this board because it's an attention-to-detail product. It's like
the Raspberry Pi 1B, sorry 1B+, where we looked at all the things after a couple of years,
we looked at all the things that people had done with the 1B and all the things they'd
liked about it and all the things they hadn't liked about it. And then James did us a spin
that kind of aggregated together fixes, you know, improvements for all of those things.
It's the same thing, so this is the same thing done to Raspberry Pi 3. It's a great little
product! It's been a long year, right?
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing you notice is that everything's been turned - everything's
gone a lot more complex, but, you know - it's the same sections on the board, you know,
it's got all the same features, it's just they've all been muchly improved, and so it's
led to a certain amount of interesting experiences.
Yeah, we've had a busy year, but, you know - I think we're pretty proud of it, right?
Yeah, I'm pretty proud of it.
People are going to like it.
Yeah. I think it's an answer to a lot of things that people have been looking for.
Yeah. Raspberry Pi 3B+.