Raspberry Pi shifts upmarket as it targets Pi Compute Module 3 at industrial systems

Raspberry Pi Foundation looking to take low-cost computer from the classroom to the control room

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is focusing a new option, called the Pi Compute Module 3, at industrial systems as it eyes a shift upmarket and away from its core in the education sector.

The modules, however, will remain low cost and are the combined effort of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and its hardware partner, Farnell element14.

"The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 continues the development of Pi for the ever-growing industrial and commercial market," said Claire Doyle, global head of Raspberry Pi and single board computing at electronics company Premier Farnell, which manufactures the Raspberry Pi for the Foundation.

"Benefiting from the Broadcom BCM2837 chip, this board allows designers to combine the speed of the Raspberry Pi 3 and the flexibility of compute modules, enabling them to design-in Pi across a broad range of applications from Internet of Things, to embedded solutions, home automation, control systems and consumer electronics."

The Raspberry Pi Compute 3 model has the Pi3 processor and memory with an additional four gigabytes of flash memory. This flash memory is integrated onto a board within a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector. The Foundation said that this leaves all the remaining processor interfaces open to customisation.

A customer I/O is available for reference, as well as a range of development kits and add ons, including a display adapter.

"Raspberry Pi has been incredibly powerful for developers to date and we are excited to see the new innovations that will come from the Industrial and Commercial sectors as a result of the launch of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module," added Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading.

A 'lite' version, minus the 4GB of Flash is also available. We are checking on the cost information. In the real world NEC is using the technology in its digital displays, so keep an eye on them.