Nordic announces successor to nRF52 2.4GHz wireless MCUs

Nordic Semiconductor is aiming at Bluetooth, Thread and Matter with a secured wireless microcontroller built around a 128MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor with 1.5Mbyte of non-volatile memory and 256kbyte of ram, which it describes as “ample for concurrent running of multiple protocols” and providing “double the processing power of the nRF52840 SoC while reducing power consumption” – the claim includes halved Rx current at 1.8V.

Called nRF54L15, the 2.4GHz radio in the new part provides up to +8dBm Tx power in 1dB increments and -98dBm Rx sensitivity for 1Mbit/s Bluetooth LE.

It supports all Bluetooth 5.4 features, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread and Matter, has flexibility to accept the result of some Bluetooth specification updates, and has a 4Mbit/s option for proprietary protocols.

Cortex-M33 is already a core with built in security features. According to Nordic, the new IC is designed for PSA Level 3 certification with secured boot, firmware update and storage, as well as integrated tamper sensors that “can detect attacks and take protective action, while the cryptographic accelerators are hardened against side-channel attacks”.

For power saving, a global real-time clock peripheral has been created that can wake up the IC from its deepest sleep mode. “This feature can enable multi-year battery life for certain products,” said Nordic. There is also a 14bit ADC, and a “software-defined peripheral enabled by a RISC-V co-processor”.

Nordic is staying tight-lipped on this last peripheral, and it has mentioned RISC-V in conjunction with the nRF54H Series, which it is also saying very little about – there are some …H performance figures here.

The nRF54L series will be made on TSMC’s 22nm 22ULL process while the nRF54H will be on GlobalFoundries 22FDX process. “We have gained valuable insights from the challenges posed by Covid-19,” said Nordic sales and marketing v-p Geir Langeland. “By strategically leveraging two distinct manufacturing facilities located in different regions, we are enhancing supply chain diversification.”

nRF54L15 is sampling (selected customers only) in a 6 x 6mm QFN with 31 GPIOs and will be available in a 2.4 x 2.2mm 300µm pitch WLCSP (wafer-level chip scale package) with 32 GPIOs, or a 350µm pitch version with 14 GPIOs.