Two new Raspberry Pi boards have quietly appeared in Raspberry Pi’s Linux kernel tree: a Raspberry Pi Zero 3 W and a Raspberry Pi 4 Model A. Neither has been officially announced yet, but device tree files reveal key details.
The Raspberry Pi Zero 3 W appears to use the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC, the same quad-core Cortex-A72 chip found in the Raspberry Pi 4, replacing the Zero 2 W’s quad-core 1GHz Cortex-A53. This suggests a significant performance boost, though thermal concerns remain given the BCM2711’s tendency to run warm in a compact form factor. The device tree also hints at eMMC storage support, an SPI flash bootloader, and a single HDMI output.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model A follows the traditional A-series formula of stripping out less-used components like Ethernet to reduce cost. This revives the Model A line last seen with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ in 2018.
Both device trees share similarities, suggesting they may be early development artifacts. Clock speeds and final features remain unknown, so confirmation will have to wait for an official announcement.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing