from Hacker News

Silicon Labs Shrinks Wireless SoCs to Extend BLE to Miniature Devices

by WaitWaitWha on 3/20/25, 2:58 AM with 24 comments

  • by nimish on 3/20/25, 5:30 AM

    The antenna is the limiting factor IIRC, the smallest module available is this thing: https://www.fdk.com/cyber-e/electronic_components/module/ble... which has the antenna as a slot in the package itself.
  • by zokier on 3/20/25, 8:41 AM

    It's bit silly to say that they shrink SoC when the new chip is exactly the same package as their previous generation from few years ago.
  • by jtrueb on 3/20/25, 11:28 AM

    Is this not just a worse version of the nRF52 and nRF54 lineup? Larger size, fewer hardware peripherals, lower radio sensitivity. What is the new thing for this chip?
  • by human_llm on 3/20/25, 1:03 PM

    Nordic Semiconductors has BLE SOCs in even smaller packages. E.g. the nRF54L15 is available in a 2.4 x 2.2 mm package.
  • by gleenn on 3/20/25, 4:35 AM

    I don't immediately see a picture of the actual chip to get a reference size bybitself, that that chip inside the tooth is pretty wild. I wonder how you would even begin to power electronics within such a space. Or perhaps this is more of a marketing level of graphics.