Nordic Semi nRF71 SoCs pair Wi-Fi 6, Thread, BLE with RISC-V coprocessor and Axon NPU

Nordic Semiconductor has introduced the nRF71 Series, a new family of ultra-low-power wireless SoCs targeting battery-operated IoT devices. The initial parts, the dual-band nRF7120 and tri-band nRF7120E, combine Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE, and Thread radios with a heterogeneous compute subsystem: an Arm Cortex-M33 and a 256 MHz RISC-V coprocessor capable of implementing SoftPeripherals such as CAN 2.0B and SDIO. The nRF7120E additionally integrates an Axon NPU that Nordic says accelerates ML inference by 10x to 17x over the Cortex-M33 alone.

The chips are positioned for smart home, wearable, and industrial IoT applications where multi-year battery life is required. Key power metrics include an average connected current of 14 µA at 2.4 GHz and 8 µA at 5 GHz with DTIM 10, enabled by Target Wake Time scheduling and a low-power receiver. Both parts include 1 MB of low-leakage RAM, 4 MB of on-chip NVM, TrustZone with PSA Certified Level 3 target, and a CRACEN cryptographic accelerator. Development support is available through the nRF Connect SDK, with a $72.38 nRF7120-DK listed at DigiKey for estimated April 2027 availability.

Architecture and wireless subsystem

• Heterogeneous compute: Dual-core design pairs a 256 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 with a 256 MHz RISC-V coprocessor; the RISC-V core implements SoftPeripherals including CAN 2.0B and SDIO, reducing need for external interface chips.
• Edge AI acceleration: Axon NPU is exclusive to the nRF7120E variant; Nordic claims 10x to 17x faster ML model execution versus the Cortex-M33 running alone.
• Wi-Fi 6 power management: Target Wake Time (TWT) and a dedicated low-power receiver enable connected standby currents of 14 µA (2.4 GHz) and 8 µA (5 GHz) at DTIM 10, the basis for the 20x standby improvement claim over nRF70 Series.
• Radio configuration: nRF7120 provides dual-band 2.4/5 GHz Wi-Fi 6; nRF7120E adds 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E; both support STA and SoftAP modes, plus a multiprotocol radio for BLE 5.x and Thread with +10 dBm BLE transmit and -99 dBm receive sensitivity.
• Security and storage: On-chip resources include 1 MB low-leakage RAM, 4 MB NVM, TrustZone isolation, tamper detection, and CRACEN cryptographic accelerator targeting PSA Certified Level 3.

Why it matters

The nRF71 Series strengthens Nordic's position as a primary silicon vendor for Zephyr RTOS and nRF Connect SDK developers, offering a single-chip solution that replaces previous multi-chip Wi-Fi + BLE + host MCU designs. For Linux and open-source IoT ecosystems, the RISC-V coprocessor and SoftPeripheral model may reduce proprietary peripheral dependencies, though mainline Linux support for the nRF71 is not yet indicated and would require new driver development given the integrated Wi-Fi 6 MAC/PHY. The early module availability from u-blox and sampling timeline suggest broad developer access will lag until 2027.