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Nordic adds NFC to Bluetooth, with ARM M4f core & low power drain

Nordic adds NFC to Bluetooth, with ARM M4f core & low power drain

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By eeNews Europe



nRF52832 is the first of Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52 Series Systems-on-Chip, with a 64 MHz ARM Cortex-M4F processor (the first time this core has been used in this type of chip, Nordic asserts), a high performance, low power 2.4 GHz multi-protocol radio, and fully automatic power optimisation. Achieving a CoreMark score of 215 the nRF52832 delivers up to 60% more generic processing power than competing solutions, Nordic says. With hardware floating point (the ‘F’ in Cortex-M4F) the chip claims 10x floating point and twice the DSP performance of comparable products. At 90 CoreMark/mA the SoC is up to twice as power efficient as competing offerings, Nordic adds.

Nordic has given the single-chip Bluetooth Smart device the added function of integrated NFC tag capability that will allow Touch-to-Pair operation of end-user devices.

"Current single-chip Bluetooth Smart solutions are struggling to keep up with the rate of innovation in Bluetooth Smart – the fastest growing wireless market in history – particularly in applications such as wearables and IoT," says Thomas Embla Bonnerud, Nordic Semiconductor’s Director of Product Management. "The main reason being that until now greater performance could only be achieved at the expense of power efficiency. The nRF52 Series uniquely merges barrier-breaking performance and power efficiency together on a Bluetooth Smart single chip for the first time."

As well as the Cortex-M4F processor, the device has 512 kB Flash and 64 kB RAM; its radio is multi-protocol for Bluetooth Smart, ANT, and proprietary 2.4 GHz operation, with -96 dB receiver sensitivity, 5.5 mA peak RX/TX currents, an on-chip RF balun and a fully-automatic power management system. Built on a 55 nm process, the nRF52832 can be delivered in 6 x 6 mm QFN and miniature 3.0 x 3.2 mm CSP packaging options.

The nRF52832 also includes on-chip analogue and digital peripherals for glueless interfacing to external components such as sensors, displays, touch controllers, LEDs, keypads, motors, digital microphones, and audio Codecs. This makes it a single-chip solution for wearables, human interface devices such as remote controllers, toys, smart home devices and appliances, and wireless charging.

"With nRF52832 we are completely pushing the envelope for what’s possible with single-chip Bluetooth Smart," continues Bonnerud. "Applications that require the sort of processing power and performance that we now pack into this chip have until now had to use a two-chip solution as there was previously no Bluetooth Smart single-chip alternative."

Development kits, QFN samples, software and documentation are available; volume production is scheduled for December 2015.

Nordic Semiconductor www.nordicsemi.com

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