Supporting network-based connected products including wearables, gaming, VR/AR, home IoT, and more

Nordic Semiconductor has announced the start of mass production of the nRF52840 Bluetooth LE (Bluetooth Low Energy) SoC (System-on-Chip), the top-tier version of Nordic's nRF52 series, which is a best-in-class, high-performance Bluetooth 5-certified SoC, and is now supplying it to customers worldwide.

The nRF52840 is being provided alongside the mid-range nRF52832 and entry-level nRF52810 SoCs in Nordic Semiconductor's nRF52 series. Equipped with rich features and peripherals, this SoC offers the performance and flexibility to support a broad range of network-based connected products including wearable devices, gaming, VR/AR, home IoT, and industrial IoT applications.

The nRF52840 SoC, with a complete mass production setup, is provided with the production version of Nordic's S140 SoftDevice (Nordic's latest RF Bluetooth 5 (Bluetooth LE) certified protocol software or stack) and Nordic's new nRF5 SDK (Software Development Kit), a production-ready development tool that supports complete peripheral drivers for the nRF52840 SoC. Additionally, the nRF52840 is supported by production-grade mesh nRF5 SDK (nRF5 SDK for Mesh) for developers implementing Bluetooth Mesh applications.

The high-end nRF52840 SoC, based on Nordic's proven nRF52 series architecture, is the industry's first single-chip solution to offer all the benefits of Bluetooth 5. Compared to previous Bluetooth LE specifications, Bluetooth 5 provides twice the on-air data bandwidth (2Mbps), four times the operating range, and advantages including eight times the broadcasting performance through advertising extension capability that extends the advertising packet payload size up to 251 bytes, as well as improved channel coexistence algorithms.

Additionally, the nRF52840 SoC is the only multiprotocol device in the market capable of simultaneously supporting both Bluetooth 5 and Thread. This SoC can simultaneously support the S140 SoftDevice and OpenThread RF protocol stack through Bluetooth LE and Thread-based "Dynamic Multiprotocol" functionality.

Engineers can immediately begin design development based on the nRF52840 SoC and S140 SoftDevice using Nordic's latest nRF5 SDK version. nRF5 SDK v15 is a production-ready development tool that supports complete peripheral drivers for the nRF52840 SoC. Additionally, the new nRF5 SDK integrates all the features of the earlier version of nRF5 SDK, which includes IPv6 (6LoWPAN) based on Bluetooth LE AL (Adaptation Layer) and a complete Internet Protocol software package. Along with this, the nRF5 SDK includes "Embedded Studio" from Segger Microcontroller, an all-in-one solution for managing, testing, and building embedded applications.

The nRF52840 SoC features a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm® Cortex™ M4F processor with sufficient general-purpose processing performance and floating-point and DSP performance to meet the most demanding wireless application requirements.

This SoC is based on a new wireless architecture that includes an +8dBm on-chip PA and 1MB flash and 256kB RAM, as well as peripherals that include a full-speed USB 2.0 controller and quad-SPI interface, in addition to Bluetooth 5 and 802.15.4 (including Thread), ANT, and proprietary 2.4GHz wireless technology (with multiple peripheral hosts such as EasyDMA). Additionally, the nRF52840 can operate with power supplies of 5V or higher, such as rechargeable battery power.

Meanwhile, this SoC is equipped with the Arm CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator, which provides best-in-class security features for Cortex-M based SoCs. Options are also available to generate and store extensive security ciphers and keys.

The S140 SoftDevice is a Bluetooth 5 certified software stack that has passed extensive testing and fully supports all the benefits of Bluetooth 5, including simultaneous operation and running multiple roles separately.

John Leonard, Product Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor, stated, "With the production-ready solutions of the nRF52840 SoC, S140 SoftDevice, and nRF5 SDK now available, we can supply the market's highest-performance multiprotocol low-power wireless production-ready solutions to global markets." He added, "As the industry's first single-chip solution providing complete support for Bluetooth 5 and Bluetooth Mesh, this SoC can support the most demanding wireless applications including advanced wearable devices, virtual reality, augmented reality, high-performance HID controllers, smart home, smart industry, and IoT networks, while also providing Thread, 802.15.4, ANT, and proprietary 2.4GHz wireless technology."