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Luminary Micro, Inc. designs, markets, and sells ARM® Cortex™-M3-based microcontrollers (MCUs). As ARM's lead partner for Cortex-M3 technology, Luminary Micro delivers the world's first silicon implementation of the Cortex-M3 processor, providing 32-bit performance at 8-/16-bit cost. Luminary Micro's award-winning Stellaris family of microcontrollers incorporates the Cortex-M3 MCU core running up to 50 MHz, embedded flash and SRAM, a 32-ch DMA, a low drop-out voltage regulator, battery backed low-power hibernation capability, integrated brown-out reset and power-on reset functions, analog comparators, 10-bit ADC, GPIOs, and watchdog and general purpose timers. The family also integrates several serial interfaces, including 10/100 Ethernet MAC+PHY, CAN, USB On-The-Go, USB Host/Device, SSI/SPI, UARTs, and I2C. Finally, the Stellaris family features peripherals designed specifically for intense industrial motor control, including motion control PWMs and quadrature encoder inputs. With every peripheral provided directly to the pins without feature multiplexing, the Stellaris family is favorably positioned for cost-conscious applications requiring significant control processing and connectivity capabilities, including motion control, monitoring (remote, fire/security, etc.), HVAC and building controls, power and energy monitoring and conversion, network appliances and switches, factory automation, electronic point-of-sale machines, test and measurement equipment, medical instrumentation, and gaming equipment.

Why Choose the ARM Architecture?

For the first time ever, embedded microcontroller system designers can utilize 32-bit performance for the same price as their current 8- and 16-bit microcontroller designs!

• With entry-level pricing at $1.00 for an ARM technology-based MCU, Luminary Micro's Stellaris product line allows for standardization that eliminates future architectural upgrades or software tools changes.
• With an ARM-based embedded market that is currently shipping at a rate of greater than 2.5 billion processors per year, the ARM ecosystem of third-party tools and solutions providers is the largest in the world.
• With the ARM Cortex architecture, designers have access to an instruction-set-compatible family that ranges from $1 to 1 GHz.

No other architecture in the world can offer this breadth of performance with instruction set compatibility!

Why Choose Cortex-M3 from Luminary Micro?

Cortex-M3 is the MCU version of ARM's v7-M instruction set architecture family of cores:

• Optimized for single-cycle flash usage
• Deterministic, fast interrupt processing: always 12 cycles, or just 6 cycles with tail-chaining
• Three sleep modes with clock gating for low power
• Single-cycle multiply instruction and hardware divide
• Atomic operations
• ARM Thumb2 mixed 16-/32-bit instruction set
• 1.25 DMIPS/MHz—better than ARM7 and ARM9
• Extra debug support including data watchpoints and flash patching Capabilities beyond ARM7 for the microcontroller market:
• Requires ½ the flash (code space) of ARM7 applications
• 2–4 times faster on MCU control applications
• No assembly code required—ever!

Why Choose the Stellaris Family?

Designed for serious microcontroller applications, the Stellaris family provides the entry into the industry's strongest ecosystem, with code compatibility ranging from $1 to 1 GHz.

• Superior integration saves up to $3.28 in system cost
• Over 50 Stellaris family members to choose from
• Real MCU GPIOs—all can generate interrupts, are 5V-tolerant, and have programmable drive strength and slew rate control
• No functional pin muxing—choose your part by the functions you need
• Advanced communication capabilities, including 10/100 Ethernet MAC/PHY and CAN controllers
• Sophisticated motion control support in hardware and software
• Both analog comparators and ADC functionality provide on-chip system options to balance hardware and software performance
• Ease of development with the Stellaris Peripheral Driver Library’s high-level API interface to the entire Stellaris peripheral set