Nordic nRF71 combines Wi‑Fi and edge AI in a low-power single chip
Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF7120 and nRF7120E combine Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth LE, Thread and application processing, while the nRF7120E adds an Axon NPU for on-device AI acceleration.
AT A GLANCE
Key points
- The nRF7120E combines Wi‑Fi 6E and an Axon NPU on one chip.
- Nordic claims the NPU is 10–17 times faster than the Cortex‑M33 for ML models.
- The nRF71 is currently sampling only with selected customers.
What is changing?
Nordic Semiconductor announced the nRF71 system-on-chip series for battery-powered devices. According to the November 3 release, the nRF7120 provides dual-band Wi‑Fi 6, while the nRF7120E adds tri-band Wi‑Fi 6E and an Axon NPU for accelerating on-device models. Both include Bluetooth LE, Thread, 4 MB of non-volatile memory and 1 MB of user-accessible RAM.
The company says nRF71 can use up to 20 times less standby power than its current nRF70 Wi‑Fi products, while the Axon NPU runs machine-learning models 10–17 times faster than the 256 MHz Cortex‑M33 processor alone. Target workloads include keyword spotting, anomaly detection and image classification.
The series is not generally available and is sampling with selected customers. Its power and speed figures are therefore manufacturer claims that should be validated in finished device designs.
Explore the original sources
Source date: 3 November 2026.
Published by AI Radar: 3 Nov 2026, 12:09 (Istanbul, UTC+3).
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