Luminary Micro (www.luminarymicro.com) designs, markets and sells ARM® Cortex™-M3-based microcontrollers (MCUs) for embedded and industrial applications. The Austin, Texas-based company is ARM’s lead partner for Cortex-M3, delivering the world’s first silicon implementation of this revolutionary microcontroller core with the introduction of Luminary Micro’s Stellaris™ family of MCUs.
The lead entry-level product in the Stellaris family represents another first: ARM for $1.00! This 20 MHz MCU brings 32-bit performance to the 8- and 16-bit MCU space while allowing designers to enter the ARM architecture for the same price as current 8-and 16-bit solutions. With this entry into the ARM architecture, embedded systems designers have access to “$1 to 1 GHz” instruction set compatible performance with Stellaris microcontrollers from Luminary Micro and GHz Cortex-A8 solutions from other vendors. This breadth of instruction set compatible performance and cost exists only in the ARM architectural community.
Just six weeks after introducing its first two Stellaris family devices, Luminary Micro introduced four new 32-bit MCUs, incorporating more memory on board, Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) functionality, and a sophisticated Motion Control unit. These features accommodate the more algorithmically-intensive higher-end applications such as digital industrial controllers or brushless DC motors, which can typically be found in products such as industrial automation and instrumentation, and robotics. Pricing for the parts remain competitive, ranging from $1.95 to $3.23 in 10K quantities – all with the price and performance point advantages offered by the Cortex-M3 MCU-enhanced core.
Luminary Micro has now introduced another 13 new 32-bit Cortex-M3 MCUs, bringing the Stellaris family to a total of 19 members introduced in just three months. The new devices add more onchip memory, operate at 50 MHz, expand the ADC functionality to 8 input channels, and add Quadrature Encoder Input functionality for motion control applications. Pricing for the new MCUs ranges from $3.80 to $5.47 in 10K quantities, remaining very cost competitive with strong performance advantages.
Luminary Micro also offers fully functional development kits with ready-to-go software and tools designed to get users running in 10 minutes or less. The development kit is a modular design with a common motherboard shared across the Stellaris family and a unique daughter-card for each family member. In addition to the development hardware, the kit includes Luminary Micro’s peripheral driver library; full evaluation versions of popular software and hardware development tools from ARM/Keil, CodeSourcery (GNU), and IAR Systems; FreeRTOS.org, Salvo Lite, ThreadX, and µC/OS-II RTOS ports and examples; comprehensive documentation, schematics, and example programs as well as all cables and jumpers. The development kit is powered via the included USB cable. Users of more than one Stellaris product simply change out the daughterboard – and the company provides daughterboard-only kits for this reason. The Stellaris development kit carries the CE mark, reflecting certification of the development kit’s conformance to European regulatory requirements.
Designers of MCU applications have long known that the ARM architecture gives them access to a third-party network unmatched in rich choices for software, tools, operating systems, hardware and support. In choosing a processor, users often heavily weigh software considerations, as software now accounts for more than 50 percent of product development costs. By entering the ARM architecture with the Stellaris product family, it is conceivable that designers will never have to upgrade architectures or change tools again, giving them a key competitive advantage in their market.
Luminary Micro is a private company and was founded in 2004. The company closed its first private funding in February 2005, and announced its second private funding round in June 2006. The company’s executive management team has a wealth of combined experience in start-ups and established companies, in creating new markets, in developing new products, and in gaining product mindshare. This depth of experience and first-hand knowledge of the founders’ accomplishments led ARM to select this young start-up as its lead partner–the first time in history that ARM had a start-up as the lead partner on a processor core development.
Luminary Micro aims to destroy the barriers between 8-/16-bit price and 32-bit performance. The Stellaris LM3S101 brought embedded developers ARM for $1.00, and the LM3S102, LMS301, LM3S310, LM3S315, LM3S316, LM3S328, LM3S601, LM3S610, LM3S611. LM3S612, LM3S613, LM3S615, LM3S628, LM3S801, LM3S811, LM3S812, LM3S815, and LM3S828 continue to establish the breadth and depth of the Stellaris family, demonstrate the versatility and functionality of Cortex-M3, and the engineering strength of the Luminary Micro design team. Silicon and development and evaluation kits are available in distribution stock today. The company can be reached at 1 512 279 8800 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Product orders can be placed at www.luminarymicro.com or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; through Mouser at www.mouser.com/luminarymicro or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
