Nordic Semi has just announced the nRF71 Series of ultra-low-power SoCs with ultra-low-power Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), and Thread connectivity, as well as an Axon NPU for edge AI workloads.
The company claims the new chips, starting with the dual-band nRF7120 and tri-band nRF7120E, deliver up to 20 times lower standby power usage than current-generation nRF70 Series Wi-Fi products. This should allow nRF71 devices to run for years on battery, whether they use BLE, Thread, or Wi-Fi, for Smart Home, wearables, and industrial IoT applications.
Nordic Semi nRF7120/nRF7120E specifications:
- MCU cores
- Arm Cortex-M33 @ up to 256 MHz
- RISC-V coprocessor @ up to 256 MHz with support for SoftPeripherals (CAN 2.0B, SDIO)
- Memory – 1 MB on-chip, user-accessible low-leakage RAM
- Storage – 4 MB on-chip NVM
- AI accelerator – Axon NPU (nRF7120E only)
- Wireless
- Wi-Fi
- Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), backward compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
- nRF7120 – Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 at 2.4 and 5 GHz
- nRF7120E – Tri-band Wi-Fi 6E at 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz
- Wi-Fi roles – Station (STA) and SoftAP
- Target Wake Time (TWT) and Wi-Fi power save with low-power receiver
- Tx Power – +22 dBm
- Multiprotocol radio for Bluetooth LE and Thread
- BLE Tx Power – + 10 dBm
- BLE Rx sensitivity – -99 dBm
- NFC tag
- Wi-Fi
- USB – High-speed USB with integrated PHY
- Other peripherals
- Up to 65x GPIOs
- 2x high-speed MSPI up to 64 MHz
- 2x high-speed SPI up to 64 MHz
- High-speed UART up to 4 Mbps
- 6x SPI/TWI/UART up to 8 MHz
- ADC, TDM, PDM, PWM and QDEC
- Security – TrustZone isolation, tamper detection and CRACEN cryptographic accelerator, designed for PSA Certified Level 3
- Supply Voltage – 2.8 to 5.5 V
- Power Consumption – Average current while connected at DTIM 10: 14 µA at 2.4 GHz and 8 µA at 5 GHz
- Package – WLCSP (4.9 × 4.6 mm)
- Temperature Range – −40 to +85°C
Both the nRF7120 and nRF7120E are fully supported in the nRF Connect SDK. The Axon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) integrated into the nRF7120E is said to run machine learning models 10x to 17x faster than the 256 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor alone.
The company is also working on a 14 x 10 mm nRF7120 module, and there’s also an nRF7120 Development Kit (nRF7120-DK), but I was unable to find any photos or detailed specs. You can already find some resources for development on the Nordic website.
u-blox has wasted no time and has already listed the ALMA-W1 module based on the dual-band nRF7120 or tri-band nRF7120E on its website, although it admits it’s still under development.
The new Nordic nRF71 ultra-low-power wireless SoCs are already sampling to selected customers, but it will take more time for them to become broadly available. The nRF7120-DK is listed for $72.38 on DigiKey, but the MOQ is 35, and stock is estimated to become available in April 2027… More details may be found on the product page and in the press release.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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The voltage range is well chosen, because it allows direct power from a lithium battery from full charge to full discharge without wasting energy in a DC-DC converter. At this average consumption level, a converter’s losses would represent a significant part of it.