Soft device vs native configuration

[karthik.ganesan]

Hi, I am using an nRF51822 EK board to develop a custom application and I was wondering about the usage of the SoftDevice. Under what conditions should I use the soft device and when would it be better to just program what i want natively? for example for BLE, i know that Soft Device offers a lot of programming options. but if i wanted to, i could program BLE manually as well. so it there a table or a list that shows what situations would be better suited for Soft Device?

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

I think you have a good point. It would be perhaps convenient to have smaller versions of the stack for miniature applications so customer can utilize more of the flash with user data. This is however what we currently offer, the 5 different stacks, S110, S120, S130, S210, S310. The S110 is in fact a miniature version in a way because it only supports the peripheral role, while e.g. S130 stack supports both peripheral and central roles, which also consumes more flash space.

[karthik.ganesan]

Hi Stefan, I understand. I am used to working with FPGAs and if you are familiar with those, when programming a soft processor for those, you can select exactly which features you want and do not want to get the smallest CPU for your needs. I guess I was thinking along those lines for the soft device as well. maybe it is something Nordic can consider for the future? to have a way for users to custom design their own softdevice with only what they need?

[Stefan Birnir Sverrisson]

Thank you for your suggestions Karthik. I aggree, this is something we should consider.