What does Luminary Micro do?

Luminary Micro designs, markets, and sells ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontrollers for the embedded and industrial markets. We were the first company to bring ARM for $1.00 to embedded designers.

Why is this product launch announcement (on July 27, 2006) significant and what differentiates it from your previous announcements?

With this product launch, Luminary Micro is introducing thirteen new Stellaris family microcontrollers and their associated development kits. The new devices offer up to 64K bytes of single cycle flash, 8K bytes of single cycle SRAM, speeds up to 50 MHz, and up to 8 analog-to-digital converter (ADC) channels at up to 1M samples per second sample rate. Two of the new devices also offer Quadrature Encoder Input (QEI) capabilities in the motion control unit.

Luminary Micro’s first announcement on March 27th introduced the company as ARM’s lead partner for the Cortex-M3 microcontroller core, and introduced the world’s first silicon implementation of that core with the 20 MHz LM3S101 and LM3S102. That introduction gave developers the opportunity to enter the ARM architecture for $1.00, as well as effectively removed barriers between 8- and 16-bit pricing and 32-bit performance.

On May 22nd, Luminary Micro introduced four new Stellaris family MCUs - the LM3S301, LM3S310, LM3S315 and LM3S316. These products are feature-rich, with increased speeds up to 25 MHz; incorporate analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and motion control features; and include more memory.

A summary of Stellaris device features can be found on the Product Selector Guide at www.luminarymicro.com/products/product_selector_guide.html

Does Luminary Micro have a development kit for its Stellaris products?

Yes. A complete development kit is available today and has been since our first announcement in March. The development kit is a modular design with a common motherboard for the entire Stellaris family and a unique daughterboard for each family member. In addition to the development hardware, the development kit includes Luminary Micro’s comprehensive peripheral driver library with easy-to-use high-level APIs; evaluation versions of popular software development tools from ARM, with the RealView® Microcontroller Development Kit, which incorporates the industry-proven Keil™ µVision development environment, the popular Sourcery G++ GNU tool set from CodeSourcery, and IAR System’s Embedded Workbench development environment; FreeRTOS.org™, Pumpkin’s Salvo™ Lite, Micrium’s µC/OS-II, and Express Logic’s ThreadX® real-time operating systems ports and examples; comprehensive documentation, schematics, and example programs as well as all cables and jumpers. With Luminary Micro’s development kit, Stellaris customers can get up and running in less than 10 minutes!

The development kit carries the CE seal of compliance to the mandatory European requirements and is fully certified.

What is the anticipated market size that you are targeting?

According to Gartner Dataquest 2005 figures, 32-bit devices are the fastest growing segment of the MCU market, with 25 percent of MCU market dollars. More market information can be found in our Market Backgrounder.

What is the packaging for these newly announced parts?

All Stellaris microcontrollers come in lead-free, RoHS-compliant packages. Our thirteen new microcontrollers are packaged in 48-pin RoHS-compliant LQFP for industrial operating temperatures. The previously announced LM3S301, LM3S310, LM3S315, and LM3S316 are also available in a 48-pin PQFP for industrial operating temperatures, while the first two devices – the LM3S101 and LM3S102 - are available in a 28-pin SOIC package for industrial operating temperatures.

When will your products be available and how can customers buy them?

The Stellaris family products announced today are available today. This has been and will continue to be true with every Stellaris product line announcement. Customers have global access to silicon, samples, and full development kits through Mouser Electronics at www.mouser.com/luminarymicro or by calling 1-800-346-6873; our expansive network of distributors; or through our website www.luminarymicro.com/sales.

Customers in Europe can also obtain products through the following regional distributors:

• UK, Ireland – Alpha Micro, www.alphamicro.net; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +44 1256 851 770
• Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg – Atlantik Elektronik, www.atlantikelektronik.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +49 89 89 5050
• France – Unirep, www.unirep.fr ; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +33 5 62 20 01 25
• Israel – Appletec, Ltd., www.appletec.net; +972 9 7498777
• Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden – Broadband Technology, www.broadband.se; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +46 8 545 667 70
• Italy, Greece, Turkey – Esco Italiana S.p.A, www.escoitaliana.it; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +39 039 20481
• Poland, Szech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Russia – PDW Marthel, www.marthel.pl; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +48 71 3110711
• Spain, Portugal – Equin, S.A., www.equinsa.es; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +34 91 388 0898 Customers in North America can obtain products through the following manufacturer’s representatives:
• Great Lakes Region – Focus Design Technologies, www.focusdt.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 440-285-5591
• South Central Region – Fralia, www.fralia.com; 817-581-8300
• North Central Region – Hanna Lind, www.hannalind.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 952-931-1242
• New England – Kitchen & Kutchin, Inc. www.kitchenkutchin.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 781-782-0700
• Midwest – KMA Sales Company, www.kmasales.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 847-398- 5300
• Mid-Central Region – Mink Associates, Inc., www.minkassoc.com; 913-341-8309
• NY State – Ontec SSI, www.ontecssi.com; 585-388-7870
• Mid-Atlantic Region – QoS Inc., www.qosrep.com; 410-453-0027
• Southeast Region – Rep, Inc., www.repinc.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 256-881-9270
• Florida & P.R. – Semtronic Associates, Inc., www.semtronic.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 407-831-8233
• Pacific Northwest – Cascade Technical Sales, Inc., www.cascade-tech.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 503-645-9660
• Rocky Mountains – Innovation Sales, www.innovationrm.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 303-652-3030
• Northern California – Caltron Components Corporation, www.caltroncomponents.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 408-748-2140
• Southern California – Tri-Tech Sales, LLC, www.tritechsales.net; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 949-413-0438
• Southwest Region – Quatra Associates, Inc., www.quatraassociates.com; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 480- 753-5544
• Canada – Pipe-Thompson, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; 905-607-1850

  Customers in South America can obtain products through the following manufacturer’s representatives:

• Brazil – Quadrarep Sup Tec Ltda, www.quadrarep.com.br; This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +55 11 3846 0506

For support in areas not listed here please contact Luminary Micro sales directly at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Luminary Micro’s website at www.LuminaryMicro.com/sales contains the most up-to-date list of regional manufacturer’s representatives and distributors of Luminary Micro products worldwide.

When will you be in volume production?

We expect full volume production (any quantity, subject to typical lead-time ordering guidelines) to begin in the third quarter of this year, 2006.

How long has the Cortex-M3 been available, and when did Luminary Micro license it?

ARM announced the Cortex-M3 at the ARM Developer’s Conference in October 2004.Luminary Micro was in discussions with ARM regarding Cortex-M3 in early 2004, and concluded its license in Q1 2005.

Why would ARM choose a start-up company to be its lead partner on a new core development?

Luminary Micro’s founders have enjoyed a professional relationship with ARM principals for many years. Based on past successes and established reputation, ARM was confident of our ability to bring Cortex-M3 to market successfully and quickly, and to rapidly proliferate new products to drive Cortex-M3 into the heart of the embedded microcontroller market. Having introduced 19 Stellaris microcontrollers in just three months validates our reputation.

What makes Cortex-M3 more desirable than other ARM cores that are used for MCUs?

There are really two parts to this question: the increased popularity of microcontrollers; and the features of Cortex-M3. First, ARM has made it clear that it sees microcontrollers burgeoning in popularity. Based on that demand, with the introduction of the Cortex family A-series, R-series, and M-series cores, ARM has more clearly segmented its products to satisfy more diverse markets. This increasing influence of the microcontroller market also drove ARM’s acquisition of Keil Software, Inc. to provide MCU users with access to world-class MCU tools at a microcontroller-market competitive price point.

Second, Cortex-M3 – in fact the entire Cortex family – has been developed to address specific applications and price/performance points. The Cortex-M3 processor implements the Thumb-2 subset of the ARM v7M instruction set architecture, providing increased performance and reduced code size which is important for 32-bit MCUs. It offers low-cost 32-bit computing for the deeply embedded market. In addition, and key to the embedded market, Cortex-M3 is the only ARM core which offers deterministic interrupt processing, which is required by all realtime embedded applications. Cortex-M3 interrupts never require more than 12 cycles, and require only 6 cycles when back-to-back interrupts are serviced by tail-chaining. The Cortex- M3 architecture is optimized for single-cycle flash usage, and features three sleep modes with clock gating for low power applications. It also contains single-cycle multiply and multiplyaccumulate instructions (very important for MCU control applications), along with atomic bit manipulation instructions (providing a read/modify/write operation in a single cycle, which is required for memory-mapped I/O). In addition, Cortex-M3 features superior debug support including data watchpoints and flash patching. Luminary Micro’s goal is to enable users to migrate from 8/16-bit MCUs to 32-bit MCUs, without paying a price penalty for access to 32-bit performance. Cortex-M3 provides the right platform for this migration path. And the enhanced development tools available in the ARM community facilitate a faster time-to-market.

What makes Cortex-M3 more desirable than an ARM7TDMI MCU?

Luminary Micro chose to build the company’s microcontrollers on the Cortex-M3 core because we believe that Cortex-M3 is the technology that will obsolete ARM7. In addition to the advantages given above, Cortex-M3 provides the following advantages over ARM7:

• Thumb2 code occupies half of the flash memory space of an ARM7TDMI MCU application (less space = less cost or more features)
• 2-4 times faster on MCU control applications
• Entire software code base is written in C/C++ - no assembly language required, even in startup code and interrupt service handlers

What makes Cortex-M3 more desirable than the other 40+ core architectures that are used for embedded MCUs?

In addition to the differentiators discussed in the previous questions, Cortex-M3 has the additional benefit of being a member of the open ARM architecture. This gives designers a number of very important benefits:

• Access to the entire ARM Connected Community for world-class tools, software, operating systems, and applications and design support.
• The ability to work in one architecture and one tools set for applications ranging from 25 DMIPS to a Gigahertz.
• The ability to span traditional 8-, 16-, and 32-bit applications price points with one architecture.
• The ability to choose the best silicon supplier for the designer’s end-market requirement and keep the software the same.

This last point deserves further clarification. According to Embedded System Programming’s annual survey of designers (April 2005), the overwhelming factors driving embedded processor selection are all related to software: software tools, operating systems, hardware tools, and available software are four of the top six criteria considered most important. This should not be a surprise, as embedded software has grown more complex and now accounts for more than 50 percent of the development cost of embedded development projects. Other surveys rate software as the factor most often responsible for making embedded development projects late to market.

With the introduction of the first Cortex-M3 microcontrollers on the market, Luminary Micro is freeing embedded designers from the shackles of proprietary architectures.

Once other Cortex-M3 licensees announce their implementations, won’t you lose your competitive edge?

Luminary Micro believes it has exceedingly competitive price points with our first six Stellaris family members, as well as with these 13 new, feature-rich microcontrollers. With customers designing in Luminary Micro products today, we have an initial time-to-market advantage over other licensees. Additionally, Luminary Micro’s full development kits have customers out of the box and running in ten minutes or less. The development kit includes both a common motherboard and microcontroller-specific daughterboard; our comprehensive peripheral driver library, which provides an easy API interface to all MCU peripherals; fully functional evaluation versions of popular software development tools from ARM/Keil, CodeSourcery (GNU), and IAR Systems; ports and examples using the small-footprint FreeRTOS.org, Salvo, µC/OS-II, and ThreadX real time operating systems; copious documentation, schematics, and example programs, and everything else a designer needs to prototype real systems, including all cables and jumpers. Users of more than one Stellaris microcontroller simply change out the daughterboard.

The Stellaris family was designed for serious embedded microcontroller applications, offering superior integration with an on-chip low dropout voltage regulator, on-chip power-on-reset and brown-out-reset functions, and an on-chip temperature sensor, which together save up to $1.28 in system cost. Additional features include:

• Real MCU GPIOs – all can generate interrupts, all have programmable drive strength and slew rate control
• No function pin muxing– pins are dedicated to one peripheral, backed by GPIO, and simultaneous use of on-chip peripherals is not limited by pin sharing, so engineers are no longer forced to choose between on-chip peripherals
• Advanced motion control support in hardware and software
• Both analog comparators and ADC functionality on a single chip provide system options to balance hardware and software performance.

As a licensee of an open architecture, how will Luminary Micro compete in the crowded microcontroller market long term?

Luminary Micro’s core competency includes a system engineer’s approach to MCU design that results in products that will delight our customers with their ease of use and applicability to embedded designers’ specific application requirements. As an example, this product launch features the introduction of Quadrature Encode Inputs for use with our fully-featured, flexible motion control unit for sophisticated motion control applications. In future announcements, you will see a similar continuing emphasis on microcontrollers that solve system problems.

What customers are using your products?

Luminary Micro initially began sampling a global program of alpha customers under nondisclosure agreement in Q4 2005. Although the Stellaris alpha program has ended, the company has customers developing applications such as industrial field measurement instrumentation; power sequencing control in complex electronic systems; medical instrumentation data aggregation; motor controllers of a variety of sizes and applications; alarm systems, access systems, and combined time-keeping and access control systems; modularized parking systems; GPRS-based tracking systems; home security systems; and home metering applications. We expect several of these customers to make product announcements late this year.

Who is on your management team?

Our seasoned management team includes CEO Jim Reinhart, Chief Marketing Officer Jean Anne Booth; Chief Technology Officer Greg North; VP Finance Stu Sorensen, VP Sales Arline Nieder; VP Engineering Tom Hegedus; and VP Operations Thomas Fedorko. Biographical information on the Luminary Micro management team can be found at www.luminarymicro.com.

How many people does your company employ?

The best thing about being a fabless semiconductor company is that with the right experience in the team, it isn’t necessary to have a big team, as manufacturing, packaging, testing, and a portion of the sales channel are all outsourced. The company is currently 35 employees strong and will continue growing modestly this year.

How many rounds of investment funding have you closed and who are your investors?

Luminary Micro closed its first private funding of $5M in February 2005 with lead investor EXA Ventures. Luminary Micro also closed a Series B of $14 million as announced on June 12, 2006. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) (www.nea.com) led the Series B round, and new investor ATA Ventures (www.ataventures.com) and previous investors including EXA Ventures also joined the round.

Who is on your Board of Directors?

Chairman Tommy Eng of EXA Ventures, Jimmy Treybig and Paul Hsiao of NEA, Independent Director Hugh Barnes, and company members Jim Reinhart and Jean Anne Booth are on the Board of Directors. Michio Fujimura of ATA Ventures is on the board as an observer. Additional biographical information can be found at here.

What manufacturing facility and technologies are you using?

TSMC in Taiwan is the world’s largest foundry supplier, and consistently achieves world-class reliability and quality metrics. Our selection of TSMC’s 0.25µm process assures our customers of the highest quality manufacturing solution, as the design libraries and technology files are well established, the process is extremely stable with an abundance of historical SPC control data, and the cell library and modules are backed with world class reliability data. Although Luminary Micro is not targeting the automotive segment with the Stellaris family of microcontrollers, we utilize TSMC’s high data reliability (automotive grade) flash for our microcontroller products, with greater than 10-year data retention and 10K cycles flash specification.