Synaptics announced the Astra SR80 series and SRW1500 series of AI-native microcontrollers as expansions to its Astra Edge AI portfolio. The Astra SR80 series consists of Edge AI Audio MCUs designed for premium sound and voice experiences in consumer and enterprise IoT platforms. They support always-on intelligence, multimodal sensor fusion, continuous context awareness, and intelligent processing across power states.
The architecture integrates a programmable Arm Cortex-M33 core, an audio CODEC, high-speed USB and SDIO, and various audio interfaces. Dedicated NPU and DSP acceleration handle natural voice-first human-machine interaction, personalization, and on-device security in compact form factors. The series includes turnkey support for advanced algorithms such as AI-based Noise Reduction and developer-friendly audio tuning software kits. Applications include Agentic AI headsets, enterprise conferencing systems, soundbars, earbuds, augmented reality devices, and other audio-centric uses.
The SR80 series complements the Astra SR100 series, which focuses on vision processing, to provide solutions for low-power streaming vision and audio at the Edge.
The Astra SRW1500 series extends the portfolio by combining AI-native compute with Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. It is positioned as one of the industry's first single-chip AI MCU platforms with integrated Wi-Fi 7, using open, developer-friendly software for continuous AI at the far Edge of IoT networks.
The SRW1500 features an Arm Cortex-M52 with Helium DSP running at 200 MHz and a 200 MHz, 50 GOPS Arm U55 NPU for on-device inferencing. It includes 1 MB of on-chip SRAM to support pre-processing and acceleration of sensor-fusion and signal processing workloads such as noise cancellation, beamforming, feature extraction, and Wi-Fi sensing. Security includes PSA Level 3 certified Root-of-Trust, with advanced power management features for multimodal sensing and intelligent connectivity in embedded applications.
Vikram Gupta, SVP & GM, Edge Compute & Connectivity Division at Synaptics, stated that extending AI-native compute across the Edge portfolio is critical for scaling the platform. He noted that the new Astra SR-Series Audio MCUs and SRW Series integrated Wireless MCUs bring premium features such as multimodal sensing and secure connectivity to the value end of the market, enabling customers to standardize on a single, production-proven architecture.
The Astra SR80 and SRW1500 series are expected to begin sampling in the second calendar quarter of 2026, with production targeted thereafter.
