STM32WB, dual Core and 2.4ghz RF SOC

[MT]

http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/media-center/press-item.html/p4013.html

http://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers/stm32wb-series.html?icmp=tt6577_gl_pron_feb2018&querycriteria=productId=SS1961

sampling to lead customers in Q1 2018, priced from $1.56 for high-volume 

M4-based microcontroller to run the main application as well as an Arm Cortex-M0+ core to offload the main processor and offer real time operation on the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5 and IEEE 802.15.4 radio. The radio can also run other wireless protocols concurrently, including OpenThread, ZigBee®, or proprietary protocols, giving even more options for connecting devices to the Internet of Things (IoT).

[mark03]

If the quality and documentation of the radio part is anything like their "blue nrg" parts, watch out!  We had to develop a product with one of these at my last job and I vowed to stick with Nordic in the future if I have any say in the matter.

I'm also curious if the radio registers are documented at the lowest level, allowing a creative hacker to do anything that the radio hardware is physically capable of, or if it is just like everyone else's wireless SoC where the radio-control core is off-limits to developers and the only access is through a corporate-provided API.  This is the only thing which would tempt me to give these a closer look.  For example, I think it would be neat if someone developed an open-source LoRa modem for non-Semtech silicon.  That way the SoC maker is off the hook for the IP violation because all they did was provide the radio and a nice register interface.

[theatrus]

If the quality and documentation of the radio part is anything like their "blue nrg" parts, watch out!  We had to develop a product with one of these at my last job and I vowed to stick with Nordic in the future if I have any say in the matter.

I'm also curious if the radio registers are documented at the lowest level, allowing a creative hacker to do anything that the radio hardware is physically capable of, or if it is just like everyone else's wireless SoC where the radio-control core is off-limits to developers and the only access is through a corporate-provided API.  This is the only thing which would tempt me to give these a closer look.  For example, I think it would be neat if someone developed an open-source LoRa modem for non-Semtech silicon.  That way the SoC maker is off the hook for the IP violation because all they did was provide the radio and a nice register interface.

Also remember the STM32W? Also a terrible part that has been scrubbed from mentions on their website.

[technix]

If the quality and documentation of the radio part is anything like their "blue nrg" parts, watch out!  We had to develop a product with one of these at my last job and I vowed to stick with Nordic in the future if I have any say in the matter.

I'm also curious if the radio registers are documented at the lowest level, allowing a creative hacker to do anything that the radio hardware is physically capable of, or if it is just like everyone else's wireless SoC where the radio-control core is off-limits to developers and the only access is through a corporate-provided API.  This is the only thing which would tempt me to give these a closer look.  For example, I think it would be neat if someone developed an open-source LoRa modem for non-Semtech silicon.  That way the SoC maker is off the hook for the IP violation because all they did was provide the radio and a nice register interface.

Let's just hope they didn't scrub all mentions to the actual way of use of the chips and shove everyone down the Cube/HAL pipeline.

The chip itself seem to me like a low power RF frontend, a STM32L0 and a STM23L4+ being glued together to me. It would be interesting to see how ST implements cross-core IPC.