Nordic samples nRF71 chips for Wi-Fi devices with local AI Nordic samples nRF71 chips for Wi-Fi devices with local AI

Two radios, one application chip

Nordic's design lets a Wi-Fi radio receive alongside a separate Bluetooth LE and Thread radio. A device can maintain its cloud connection while listening for nearby wireless traffic. Its higher-end part adds hardware acceleration for inference, while small Neuton models can run on the processor alone.

How software shares the hardware

The SDK architecture documentation describes three processing domains. A 256 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 runs the application, Wi-Fi host driver and internet networking stack. It also runs the software stacks for the separate multiprotocol radio. A 256 MHz RISC-V coprocessor can take tasks off that main core, while a dedicated Wi-Fi subsystem handles the wireless medium-access layer. The domains exchange data through shared memory and an interprocessor communication service. Security functions include TrustZone isolation, a cryptographic accelerator and a key-management unit. With Trusted Firmware-M enabled, part of the memory and peripherals is configured as non-secure before control passes to the application. Separate board targets select builds with or without that separation. The documented Wi-Fi modes include operation as a client, scanning, and radio characterization. This gives firmware teams several distinct execution and communication boundaries to account for when placing application work.

An existing AI platform gains another wireless option

Nordic had already announced its Axon-equipped nRF54LM20B on January 6. That device paired a 128 MHz application core with 2 MB of non-volatile memory and 512 KB of RAM. The same announcement introduced Nordic Edge AI Lab and custom Neuton models for tasks such as anomaly detection and gesture recognition. Nordic described Neuton models as typically smaller than 5 KB. It also reported a supply-chain deployment that detected shock, shaking and transportation on nRF54L devices, distributing that capability through its cloud lifecycle services. The earlier platform establishes a separate baseline for the new hardware's memory and processing specifications.

A module offers two integration paths

Also on November 3, u-blox announced ALMA-W1 modules based on the new chips. Customers can choose a wireless microcontroller configuration for custom application development or a network-processor configuration using u-connectXpress. The latter arrives with AT-command software covering the Wi-Fi driver, Bluetooth stack, communications protocols and security libraries. The family offers internal or external antennas and optional additional flash memory. Embedded-antenna versions measure 10.4 by 14.3 millimeters; external-antenna versions measure 10.4 by 11.2 by 1.9 millimeters. Those options let a product team choose between putting its application on the module and controlling wireless connectivity from another processor. Initial module samples are available to selected customers, with a wider sampling program planned.