⚡ Nordic nRF71: 20x lower standby power for Wi-Fi

Nordic Semiconductor has announced the nRF71 Series, a new line of ultra-low-power SoCs designed for battery-operated devices. The chips integrate Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy, and Thread connectivity, alongside an Axon NPU for edge AI workloads. The company claims these components deliver up to 20 times lower standby power usage compared to the current nRF70 Series Wi-Fi products.

The initial models include the dual-band nRF7120 and the tri-band nRF7120E. Both variants feature Arm Cortex-M33 cores running at up to 256 MHz and a RISC-V coprocessor at the same frequency. The RISC-V core supports SoftPeripherals such as CAN 2.0B and SDIO. Memory consists of 1 MB of on-chip low-leakage RAM and 4 MB of on-chip NVM storage.

Wireless capabilities cover Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) with backward compatibility for 802.11a/b/g/n/ac standards. The nRF7120E model includes the Axon NPU for AI acceleration, a feature absent in the standard nRF7120. Nordic states that these specifications enable devices to operate for years on battery power across Smart Home, wearable, and industrial IoT applications.