Nordic adds Wi-Fi and edge AI to nRF71 wireless SoCs

Nordic Semiconductor has introduced the nRF71 Series of wireless systems on chip, combining Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy and Thread with support for edge AI on a single device.

The first parts are the nRF7120 and nRF7120E. The nRF7120 offers dual-band Wi-Fi 6, while the nRF7120E adds tri-band Wi-Fi 6E and an Axon neural processing unit for hardware acceleration. Both have 4 MB of on-chip non-volatile memory and 1 MB of user-accessible RAM.

Nordic says the series uses up to 20 times less standby power than its current nRF70 Series Wi-Fi products. The company is targeting battery-powered smart home equipment, wearables and industrial IoT devices.

Separate radios receive simultaneously

The architecture has two independent radios with separate RF and processing blocks: a Wi-Fi radio and a 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio drawn from Nordic's nRF54 Series. Both can receive simultaneously, allowing a device to maintain its Wi-Fi connection while listening for Bluetooth LE or Thread traffic.

Applications include Matter bridges, Thread border routers, smart locks, security panels and industrial sensors, with wireless connectivity and the application running on the same chip.

According to Nordic, the Axon NPU runs machine learning models 10 to 17 times faster than the 256 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor alone. The release identifies keyword spotting, anomaly detection and image classification as potential uses. Nordic's Neuton software also supports small models built from a developer's own data for inference on the processor, while nRF Cloud provides over-the-air model updates.

“Edge AI will be part of every connected device, but for those that run on a battery, Wi-Fi has demanded a power budget they could not afford,” said Kjetil Holstad, EVP Wi-Fi and Power Management at Nordic Semiconductor.

The nRF71 Series is sampling with selected customers. Nordic will show the devices, including a Nordic-branded module, at electronica in Hall C6, booth 159.