Nordic Semiconductor was initially founded as Nordic VLSI in Trondheim, Norway in 1983. The company was formed by four post-graduates from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Initially the company focused on the design of mixed-signal application-specific integrated circuits within the Nordic region. In 1996, the firm went public on the Norwegian stock exchange, where it still trades as of 2018. In 1998, NVLSI released their first wireless standard products in the 433 MHz ISM band. In 2003 NVLSI was renamed Nordic Semiconductor, often known as Nordic Semi, to reflect the company's full focus on ultra low-power wireless devices. The same year saw the release of Nordic Semiconductor's first wireless devices at 2.4 GHz. Since 2003, Nordic Semiconductor has maintained a clear focus on wireless products for the 2.4 GHz band and has seen its devices used in a wide range of branded consumer electronic products. Nordic Semiconductor maintains an especially dominant position in the wireless sports and fitness and wireless desktop peripheral markets. Nordic Semiconductor have products that support 3 main connectivity topologies: Bluetooth low energy, ANT, ANT+ and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols. 2012 saw the release of Nordic Semi's third generation of ultra low power wireless products. This family of products is named the nRF51 series and they incorporate the ARM Cortex-M series microcontrollers at their core. In 2015 Nordic Semiconductor introduced their newest 2.4 GHz ISM band SoC series, the nRF52 which incorporate the ARM Cortex-M4 as their core. In January 2018, Nordic Semiconductor introduced and started sampling to selected lead customers their first LTE SoC, the nRF91 series.In November 2019, Nordic Semiconductor introduced and started sampling to selected lead customers their new flagship SoC containing dual-core ARM Cortex-M33 processors and a multi-protocol radio stack, the nRF53 series.
Products
Nordic Semiconductor designs and produces SoC and connectivity solutions primarily for the ISM bands at 2.4 GHz and 868/915 MHz bands. Current products include SoCs incorporating the ARM Cortex-M0, ARM Cortex-M4 and ARM Cortex-M33 microcontroller cores. Some of their most popular products are the nRF24L01+ and the nRF24LE1, both using the lightweight and proprietary "Enhanced ShockBurst" protocol stack in 2.4 GHz ISM band. The nRF24L01+ is a simple transceiver with some logic to implement the protocol stack and is connected to a microcontroller via an SPI bus, while the nRF24LE1 can be seen as an nRF24L01 and a microcontroller in the same chip.
Clones
Some clones of Nordic Semiconductor's chips can be found on the market, such as the SI24R1 and the BK2421. They often demonstrate inferior receiver sensitivity and a higher power consumption, although they may add additional features such as a higher maximal transmission power.
Locations
Nordic Semiconductor is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway. R&D offices are located in Trondheim, Oslo, Kraków, Turku, Oulu and Portland. Technical support or sales offices are located in Sunnyvale, Boston, Chicago, Portland, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Muntinlupa and Sydney.
