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I've thought EMF32 are most efficient, but I've looked up NRF52840 and shocked: 150 uA/MHz fo EMF32 and 30 (!) uA/MHz for Nordic part, if I goggled it right.

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Yeah, the Nordic part is basically magic if you are careful. If these guys can do 10x on that, a whole market segment could move to energy harvesting / single use battery and battery life for other segments could double or triple. (Often the uC is not the big power draw)

It's not hard at all to get good uA/MHz numbers, it just increases die size and cost. You can push it pretty far by tuning the synthesis, for example the same Cortex-M4 core on the Ambiq Apollo3 Blue advertises "6 μA/MHz executing from flash or RAM at 3.3 V"

These are magnitudes of difference across the Espressif, Nordic, and Ambiq parts. The difference in price is also proportional.

https://ambiq.com/apollo3-blue/

Cool, il check that out!

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