Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 multiprotocol system-on-chip

The nRF52840 is a multiprotocol system-on-chip (SoC) from Nordic Semiconductor. Based on the nRF52 Series architecture and compatible with the existing nRF52, nRF51 and nRF24 Series products, the ultralow power SoC offers simultaneous Bluetooth 5 and Thread support, with Zigbee support coming soon.

The product builds on the architecture of the nRF52 Series of SoCs to support complex Bluetooth Low Energy and other low-power wireless applications. It employs a 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F processor, plus a CPU with 1 MB of flash and 256 KB of RAM, a floating-point unit and digital signal processor (DSP) performance. The SoC also incorporates the Arm TrustZone CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator for good security.

The product complies with the Bluetooth 5 specification, which, coupled with increased maximum output power, enables the device to deliver Bluetooth Low Energy wireless connectivity with up to four times the range or up to twice the raw data bandwidth (2 Mbps) compared with the Bluetooth Low Energy implementation of Bluetooth 4.2. In addition to Bluetooth 5 support, the SoC includes NFC-A tag support plus IEEE 802.15.4 capabilities for Zigbee- and Thread-based smart home technologies or as a Network Adaptation Layer with 6LoWPAN and standard internet protocols.

The multiprotocol SoC is suitable for a variety of wireless Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including advanced wearables, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), high-performance HID controllers, smart home products and connected industrial devices.