The S140 SoftDevice is a precompiled and linked binary image implementing a Bluetooth® 5.1 Low Energy protocol stack for the nRF52 Series of System on Chip (SoC)s.
See the relevant compatibility matrix in Additional documentation for SoftDevice/Integrated Circuit (IC) compatibility information.
SoC application with the SoftDevice shows the nRF52 series software architecture. It includes the standard ARM® Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) interface for nRF52 hardware, the MBR, profile and application code, application specific peripheral drivers, and a firmware module identified as a SoftDevice.
A SoftDevice consists of three main components:
- SoC Library: implementation and nRF Application Programming Interface (API) for shared hardware resource management (application coexistence)
- SoftDevice Manager (SDM): implementation and nRF API for SoftDevice management (enabling/disabling the SoftDevice, etc.)
- Bluetooth 5.1 Low Energy protocol stack: implementation of protocol stack and API
The API is a set of standard C language functions and data types provided as a series of header files that give the application complete compiler and linker independence from the SoftDevice implementation. For more information, see Application programming interface.
The SoftDevice enables the application developer to develop their code as a standard ARM Cortex® -M4 project without having the need to integrate with proprietary IC vendor software frameworks. This means that any ARM Cortex -M4-compatible toolchain can be used to develop Bluetooth Low Energy applications with the SoftDevice.
The SoftDevice can be programmed onto compatible nRF52 Series ICs during both development and production.