u-blox has announced the ALMA-B2 module family, a series of four variants built on the Nordic Semiconductor nRF54LM20 Cortex-M33 wireless MCU. The modules support Bluetooth LE 6.0 with Channel Sounding, IEEE 802.15.4 (Thread, Zigbee, Matter), Nordic's proprietary 2.4 GHz protocol, and NFC. Two variants (ALMA-B211 and ALMA-B216) include an Axon NPU for Edge AI workloads, delivering up to 15x faster ML inference compared to the main CPU alone. The open CPU architecture allows developers to run applications directly on the module using Nordic's nRF Connect SDK, eliminating the need for an external host MCU. Early samples are expected in the coming weeks.
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