Synaptics has introduced the Astra SRW1500 Series of AI-native Edge AI MCUs designed for smart IoT edge devices. The family features an Arm Cortex-M52 core, an optional Arm Ethos-U55 Neural Processing Unit (NPU), and tri-band Wi-Fi 7 or Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 6.0 LE, and 802.15.4 connectivity, in a single package. It targets low-latency on-device AI workloads such as voice-trigger detection,…

AkiraOS is a Zephyr-based embedded OS that runs sandboxed WebAssembly applications on microcontrollers and lets users deploy and update firmware OTA without reflashing. In other words, it’s similar to Docker containers, but for microcontrollers. The open-source embedded platform separates the OS from the application. That means the firmware stays stable, while apps are independent .wasm binaries…

Back in November 2024, we wrote about Qualcomm’s QCC730M and QCC74xM modules for low-power IoT devices, but at the time, there was no evaluation board EVK for those SoCs. Fast forward to today, and the official development boards for the QCC74x series have finally been released, complete with a surprisingly affordable price tag. The Qualcomm QCC74xM EVK is a tri-radio evaluation board with Wi-Fi…

Ezurio Tungsten 510 and Tungsten 700 SMARC 2.1 compliant system-on-module powered by MediaTek Genio 510 hexa-core and Genio 700 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT SoCs with an up to 4 TOPS NPU. The SMARC modules feature 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4 memory and 16GB flash by default (upgradeable up to 128GB), offer dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, and various interfaces exposed through…

BeagleBoard.org Foundation’s BeagleConnect Zepto “$1 computer” is an upcoming open-source hardware board powered by Texas Instruments MSPM0L117 Cortex-M0+ MCU, part of the MSPM0 family introduced in 2023. It’s a tiny board with mikroBus-compatible headers, a TAG-CONNECT JTAG connector, two Qwiic connectors for expansion (or one Qwiic connector + USB-C depending on the variant), Boot and Reset…

Nuvoton’s new NuMicro M3331 is a series of 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 MCUs clocked at 180 MHz that integrate an ARGB LED controller, a DSP instruction set, a single-precision FPU, and TrustZone security for smart factories, renewable energy systems, and consumer devices. In the past, we have written about other Cortex-M33 MCUs like the STM32U3B5/C5, Texas Instruments MSPM33C321A, Nordic Semi’s…

Toradex has launched two new ultra-compact (30x30mm) System-on-Module (SoM) families: OSM and Lino, powered by NXP i.MX 91 or i.MX 93 Arm Cortex-A55 SoC for Edge industrial and IoT applications. The OSM iMX91 and OSM iMX93 variants comply with the OSM Size-S standard, featuring a 332-ball contact grid designed to be soldered to the carrier board. The Lino is a proprietary format that keeps the…

Texas Instruments MSPM0G5187 and AM13Ex are two new microcontroller (MCU) families featuring the company’s TinyEngine neural processing unit (NPU) to enable low-latency, high-efficiency Edge AI/Machine Learning inference on the chips. TI claims that the TinyEngine NPU can run AI models with up to 90 times lower latency and more than 120 times lower energy utilization per inference than similar…