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What is a softdevice?

Kaveh.M

Hi, 

What is the softdevice provided by Nordic? Does it include the BLE stack? How much memory and which part of the memory this softdevice occupies? Is the BLE radio transceiver integrated on the same die as the MCU part of nRF52833? When we flash softdevice, are we programming it into the MCU part of SOC or the BLE radio part of SOC? How that BLE radio interacts with MCU on nRF52833 SOC? Can you also provide a helpful and simple link about BLE stack? Is this possible not to use softdevice and make our own BLE stack code for applications? Is the code for softdevice from Nordic available or it is proprietry? 

So many questions, I appreciate if you answer. 

  • +1

    Hi, 

    I think you mean the SoftDevice in nRF5 SDK. 

    The SoftDevice provided by Nordic Semiconductor is a precompiled and linked binary software implementing a wireless protocol (Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE), and the source code is not publicly available. It is a high-performance, protocol stack for nRF52 Series SoCs. The SoftDevice includes the BLE stack and is fully qualified. 

    The SoftDevice shares the available flash memory and RAM on the nRF52 SoC with the application. The application must therefore be aware of the memory resources needed by the SoftDevice and leave the parts of the memory used by the SoftDevice undisturbed for correct SoftDevice operation. see SoftDevice memory usage

    The BLE radio transceiver is integrated on the same die as the MCU part of nRF52833. When you flash the SoftDevice, you are programming it into the MCU part of the SoC. The SoftDevice enables ACTIVE and INACTIVE signals from the SoftDevice to the application notifying it when the radio is in use. For more information about the BLE stack, you can refer to the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol stack documentation.

    It is not recommended to run the BLE functionality without the SoftDevice. The SoftDevice is Nordic's implementation of the BLE stack, and without it, you will not be able to conform to the BLE specifications. See this post. 

    Regards,
    Amanda H.
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