While I don't have a RPi3 handy, any change in linear algebra performance is likely explained by this portion of @Alex Newman 's post in another thread.

We also experimented with performance tuned BLAS libraries for the ARM CPU, but the Raspberry Pi distribution's use of ARMv6 [Raspberry Pi 1] software for their ARMv7 [Raspberry Pi 2] and ARMv8 [Raspberry Pi 3] devices makes that very difficult. Libraries like OpenBLAS don't do the same sort of runtime CPU detection that things like Intel MKL do and the hand-tuned assembly for ARMv6 will often just crash on ARMv7 (and have missing operations if you target ARMv7 and attempt to run it on ARMv6).

I would definitely be interested if anyone did create such libraries, though. Of course a tremendous amount of time and validation from vendors and the community would be required to get them up the quality where they'll be accurate enough in all scenarios we rely on them. For now, I'm having to use very basic CBLAS because it's the best way to deliver software that runs on all generations of the Raspberry Pi and is relatively accurate.

I have no Pi 3 - but in my opinion you should install the temp-monitor to your taskbar and watch it while running Mathematica. On my slightly overclocked Pi2 some calculations bring it to temperatures around 70°C - and as the Pi 3 runs hotter, I could imagine that it possibly runs too hot and clocks down while calculating.

There's a Raspberry Pi 3? I never saw anything on the tech review sites.

Hi and thanks for the feedback. The experiment is pretty simple: load a noobs os, set up raspian, log into terminal, start wolfram (not mathematica) Needs["Benchmarking`"] Benchmark[]. I am very convinced 10.3.1 has a problem and that 10.0.2 is the best wolfram-engine. I performed the same experiment on the model A. With 10.0.2 I see numbers for time ranging from 1100-1600. With 10.3.1 on the A I get 3400 sec for benchmark. On the model B the time is 306 seconds with 10.0.2, I then get 901 sec with 10.3.1. I get 500 sec on the 3 and I would expect a number around 170 with 10.0.2 if I could run it on the 3. I would hope wolfram would consider pulling 10.3.1 in favor of 10.0.2. Is there a way to back port 10.0.2 on to Jessie? I am happy to do more experiments, such as those suggested by M.S. but I don't think its the hardware.

Thanks. Thats at least two votes now. Its clear that the RPI is really making progress with the hardware. I would hope that Mathematica would advance with it. The RPI 3 is great and let's put it to good use.

The general linear algebra performance has been improved considerably in the recent 11.3.0 Raspberry Pi release while still maintaining ARMv6 compatibility.

This will be reflected as a corresponding improvement in the Benchmark[] results.