Nordic launches nRF71 chips for battery powered Wi-Fi and edge AI
Nordic Semiconductor has launched the nRF71 series, a family of low power SoCs that combines Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Thread and edge AI on a single chip. The company says the chips can deliver standby power consumption up to 20 times lower than its current nRF70 Wi-Fi products.
- The nRF71 series combines Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Thread and edge AI on one chip.
- Nordic claims standby consumption up to 20 times lower than its nRF70 Wi-Fi products.
- The Axon NPU runs machine learning models 10 to 17 times faster than a 256 MHz Arm Cortex M33 operating alone.
- The first SoCs are the nRF7120 and nRF7120E.
- Samples are available to a small group of customers.
One chip combines connectivity and edge AI
The nRF71 series is designed for battery powered smart devices that need wireless connectivity and local processing. Nordic says the platform brings together Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread and edge AI, supported by the company's existing software and development tools.
According to Nordic, the lower standby consumption could expand the use of Wi-Fi in battery powered products for smart homes, wearables and industrial IoT. The company describes the series as a platform for devices that can connect to networks, process data locally and operate for years on a single battery.
Nordic Executive Vice President for Wi-Fi and Power Management Kjetil Holstad said: “With the nRF71 series, Nordic finally removes this obstacle.” He added that the company is bringing Wi-Fi and edge AI together with the low power platform and tools developers already use for Bluetooth LE.
Axon NPU handles local machine learning
The series can run edge AI inference directly on the chip, without an external AI processor. Nordic says this can help devices respond faster, use less energy and require fewer components.
The nRF71 includes Nordic's Axon neural processing unit, which supports applications such as keyword detection, anomaly detection and image classification on battery powered devices. Nordic says Axon runs machine learning models 10 to 17 times faster than an Arm Cortex M33 processor running at 256 MHz when that processor operates alone.
Developers can also create ultra lightweight AI models from their own data with Nordic's Neuton software. These models are intended to run directly on the processor without using the NPU. Nordic also points to remote model updates through nRF Cloud, covering the model lifecycle alongside the device's application and wireless connectivity.
Two radios support simultaneous connections
The nRF71 series is aimed at products including battery powered smart home hubs, Matter gateways, Thread border routers, Matter compatible smart locks, alarm panels, wearables and industrial sensors.
Nordic says this is enabled by two independent radios with separate RF and processing blocks. One radio handles Wi-Fi, while the other is Nordic's 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio from its latest nRF54 series wireless SoCs. Both radios can receive data simultaneously, allowing a device to maintain a Wi-Fi cloud connection while listening for Bluetooth LE or Thread communications.
The first products are the nRF7120 and nRF7120E. The nRF7120 supports dual band Wi-Fi 6. The nRF7120E adds tri band Wi-Fi 6E and the Axon NPU for hardware accelerated edge AI. Both devices include 4 MB of on chip nonvolatile memory and 1 MB of user accessible RAM.
Samples are available to a limited customer group
Nordic will present the nRF71 series and a Nordic branded module at Electronica this year, in hall C6, booth 159.
Samples are already available to a small group of customers. Developers can contact their local Nordic sales representative for availability conditions. For users and product developers, the announcement provides a single chip option for combining Wi-Fi with Bluetooth LE, Thread and local AI in battery powered devices, while the claimed standby reduction targets one of the power constraints associated with Wi-Fi products.
