Suggestion: Nordic MCU without the radio

[ecorm]

This is not a support request, but merely a suggestion to the company. I need a host MCU for my project which will use an nRF52-based pre-approved module. I would like to use a second nRF52 as host MCU with the radio disabled for the following reasons:

• Can use same VS Code toolchain for both the module and host MCU
• Familiarity with nRF52 product family can be applied to both module and host MCU development
• Can re-use the same code for serial communications between module and host MCU

I was considering the nRF52832 for my host MCU, but it is severely lacking in UART peripherals: it only has one!

A Cortex-M4F MCU from a competitor that costs about the same has way more peripherals available for the same pin count. This is not surprising, as this competing product does not include a radio taking up silicon real estate.

So I'm thinking: wouldn't it be nice if Nordic had a Cortex-based MCU without the radio?

[ovrebekk]

Hi

Nordic is a relatively small company, and our focus is on low power wireless products. You are not the first to ask for MCU only products, but there are no current plans to support this. Even if we were to simply remove the radio from all the existing nRF52 parts and release MCU only parts this would be a huge undertaking from our side, and it would be hard for us to compete with companies that have a huge catalog of MCU's already. 

Either way, good to see that you got some alternative suggestions to your problem and have decided to close the ticket

Best regards
Torbjørn