The original Raspberry Pi was originally intended to be a low-powered, easily-extensible computer to help children learn computer science concepts. Those traits made the unit popular with all kinds users, including retro video game enthusiasts , IoT developers, and embedded systems designers. Back in 2014, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released the Pi Compute Module variant, a single-board computer with 4GB of integrated eMMC storage and a smaller footprint. The Foundation has now released a refreshed Compute Module 3 , sporting the same quad-core SoC and 1GB of RAM as the latest Raspberry Pi 3. The CM3 is intended for use in embedded applications and IoT devices.
The Module 3’s quad-core Soc is based on a Cortex A53 design running at 1.2 GHz. This spec bump results in a claimed ten-fold boost to computing power when compared to the original Compute Module’s single-core 700 MHz SoC.
