Luminary Micro Announces Availability of Thirteen New Stellaris(TM) 32-bit Microcontrollers Based on ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-M3 Core

Luminary Micro Announces Availability of Thirteen New Stellaris(TM) 32-bit Microcontrollers Based on ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-M3 Core

July 26, 2006

Luminary Micro Has Delivered 19 Stellaris Microcontrollers to Market in Three Months as `ARM for $1.00' Eliminates Economic Entry Barriers to 32-bit Performance

    AUSTIN, Texas, July 26 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Luminary
Micro ( http://www.luminarymicro.com ), a fabless
semiconductor company that designs, markets, and sells
ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-M3 processor-based microcontrollers and
was the first to bring ARM for $1.00 to embedded
developers, announces today the availability of 13 new
Stellaris(TM) family 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) and
their associated development kits. All 13 devices are
available immediately and 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.  Stellaris MCUs
are available in industrial temperature grade, with pricing
ranging from $1.00 to $5.47 in 10K resale quantities, and
Stellaris family development kits for the family are
available for $249. 

    Luminary Micro is ARM's lead partner for the Cortex-M3
processor with six previously announced Stellaris MCUs,
including the entry-level LM3S101 MCU priced at $1.00.
Luminary Micro's Stellaris family of microcontrollers are
the only Cortex-M3 implementations available in silicon
form.  The rich feature set of each Stellaris device is
ideal for applications such as building and home
automation; factory automation and control; industrial
control power devices; stepper motors; brushed and
brushless DC motors; and AC induction motors. The devices
also feature single cycle embedded Flash and SRAM, a
low-dropout voltage regulator, integrated brown-out reset
and power-on reset functions, analog comparators, up to
eight channels of 10-bit ADC at up to 1M samples per
second, SSI, GPIOs, a watchdog timer and up to seven
general purpose timers, up to two UARTs, I2C, and up to six
PWM waveform generators for motion control, and QEI, all
available directly at the pins without multiplexing. A
complete Stellaris family Product Selector Guide detailing
features of each device can be found at
http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/product_selector_guide.html
.

    "19 Cortex-M3 processor-based microcontrollers in
less than a year is a significant product development
schedule from Luminary Micro," said Wayne Lyons,
director, Embedded Solutions, ARM. "The Stellaris
family is poised to take advantage of the diverse and
growing worldwide market for MCUs and the Cortex-M3
processor is performing strongly in industrial and embedded
markets.  Performance and cost are critical barriers in MCU
designs and Luminary Micro has surpassed our expectations
with its delivery of the Stellaris family."
 
    Development Ease and Functionality

    The company's feature-rich development kit, which was
announced in March with the first two Stellaris products,
supports the entire Stellaris line. The development kit is
a modular design with a unique daughterboard for each
family member and a common motherboard.  The kit comes
ready-to-go with bundled software and tools designed to get
users running in 10 minutes or less. In addition to the
development hardware, the bundle includes Luminary Micro's
comprehensive peripheral driver library with easy to use
high-level APIs; comprehensive documentation, schematics,
and example programs as well as all cables and jumpers.
Users of more than one Stellaris family member can simply
change out the daughterboard to accommodate new products --
additional daughterboard kits are available individually.
The development kit carries the CE seal of compliance to
the mandatory European requirements and is fully certified.


    The development kit also includes evaluation versions
of popular software and hardware development tools.  The
software tools packages included are ARM's RealView(R)
Microcontroller Development Kit, which incorporates the
industry-proven Keil(TM) uVision development environment;
CodeSourcery's Sourcery G++ GNU tools including the Eclipse
debugger; and IAR Systems' Embedded Workbench development
environment.  The development kit also includes
FreeRTOS.org(TM), Pumpkin's Salvo(TM) Lite, Micrium's
uC/OS-II, and Express Logic's ThreadX(R) real-time
operating systems.  All of the real time operating systems
are optimized for small-footprint applications, and all of
the ports include extensive programming examples. 

    Embedded Developers Prefer the ARM Architecture

    With an ARM-based embedded market that is currently
shipping at a rate of greater than 1.5 billion processors
per year, the ARM ecosystem of silicon, tools, software,
hardware, systems, and support is the largest in the world.
ARM's Cortex architecture offers designers access to an
instruction-set-compatible family that ranges from $1 to 1
GHz, a breadth of instruction-set-compatible price and
performance that no other architecture can match. 
Developed specifically for microcontroller applications,
Cortex-M3 offers the following features:

     * Optimized for single cycle flash usage
     * Deterministic, fast interrupt processing -- never
more than 12 cycles,        
       only 6 cycles with tail-chaining
     * Three sleep modes with clock gating for low power
     * Single cycle multiply and multiply-accumulate
instructions
     * Native ARM Thumb2 mixed 16-/32-bit instruction set
-- no mode switching
     * Superior debug features including data watchpoints
and flash patching
     * Atomic bit manipulation operations --
read/modify/write in a single  
       instruction
     * 1.25 DMIPS/MHz (compare to ARM7 at 0.9 DMIPS/MHz and
ARM9 at 1.1        
       DMIPS/MHz)

    With an entry price of just $1.00, the Stellaris
product line allows for software standardization that
eliminates future architectural upgrades or software tools
changes. Now, 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.  Surveys of embedded system
designers highlight software tools as the single most
critical factor when choosing a processor, and the ARM
ecosystem is widely acknowledged to be unsurpassed in this
respect.  

    Luminary Micro's Chief Marketing Officer Jean Anne
Booth adds that availability of the Stellaris family
removes any argument for not upgrading to 32-bit. 
"The Stellaris family was specifically engineered to
bring 32-bit performance to the 8/16-bit MCU space with a
true microcontroller single-chip solution," Booth
said. "With system cost parity for 8/16-bit MCU
designs, and performance 2-4 times faster than an ARM7TDMI
on microcontroller applications, the Stellaris family also
offers embedded developers the opportunity to eliminate
assembly code from their entire code base.  

    "Thus the question is no longer `Why use 32-bit
for my embedded application?' -- now the question is `Why
not use Stellaris 32-bit for my embedded
application?'"

    The Stellaris Family 

    Stellaris family MCUs are based on the ARM Cortex-M3
processor, the microcontroller member of the ARM Cortex
processor family. Stellaris is 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:

     * Entire software code base is written in C/C++ -- no
assembly language        
       required, even in startup code and interrupt service
handlers

     * Occupies half the flash code size of ARM7TDMI MCU
applications

     * 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.

    All of the Stellaris family LM3S3xx, LM3S6xx, and
LM3S8xx devices are packaged in 48-pin RoHS-compliant LQFP.
A summary of Stellaris device features can be found on the
Product Selector Guide at
http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/product_selector_guide.html
.

    Try Before You Buy!

    Luminary Micro offers a "Try Before You Buy"
feature using VirtuaLabs technology, allowing instant, easy
access to Luminary Micro development systems hardware and
software using standard web browsers for evaluation,
demonstration and training. The Stellaris VirtuaLabs
contain real hardware and fully functional pre-configured
software. Utilizing VirtuaLabs, embedded systems developers
can write and debug code on ARM/Keil's RealView
Microcontroller Development Kit, CodeSourcery's Sourcery
G++ (GNU), or IAR Systems' Embedded Workbench development
environments targeting their favorite Stellaris
microcontroller. Users can also work with ports and
examples of real-time operating systems such as
FreeRTOS.org, Pumpkin's Salvo, Express Logic's ThreadX, and
Micrium's uC/OS-II. The Stellaris VirtuaLabs allow embedded
developers to start evaluating immediately from the comfort
of their own desktop, without cost or obligation, simply by
selecting any "Try Before You Buy" link on
Luminary Micro's web site.

    Pricing and Availability

    Pricing for the 13 new microcontrollers ranges from
$3.94 to $5.47 in 10K resale quantities. Full development
kits, including applications software and evaluation
versions of popular software tools, are available now for
$249 each.  The Rowley CrossFire evaluation kit for the
Stellaris LM3S102 is also available for $149.  Silicon,
development kits, and evaluation kits are available through
Luminary Micro's global sales channel including Mouser
Electronics. Orders may be placed at
http://www.luminarymicro.com or through Mouser at
http://www.mouser.com/luminarymicro . Contact Luminary
Micro at 1-512-279-8800 or email [e-mail]
for more information.

    About Luminary Micro and Stellaris

    Luminary Micro, Inc. designs, markets and sells ARM
Cortex-M3-based microcontrollers (MCUs). Austin,
Texas-based Luminary Micro is the lead partner for the
Cortex-M3 processor, delivering the world's first silicon
implementation of the Cortex-M3 processor. Luminary Micro's
introduction of the Stellaris family of products provides
32-bit performance for the same price as 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. Contact the company at 1-512-279-8800 or email
[e-mail] for more information.  Complete
press kits including photos are available for download at
http://www.LuminaryMicro.com/Press/25July06Launch .  

    Stellaris and the Luminary Micro logo are trademarks of
Luminary Micro, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United
States and other countries.  ARM and RealView are
registered trademarks of ARM Limited. Keil and Cortex are
trademarks of ARM Limited. All other brands or product
names are the property of their respective holders.
"ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc; its
operating company ARM Limited; and the regional
subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan;
ARM France SAS; ARM Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.; ARM
Belgium N.V.; AXYS Design Automation Inc.; AXYS GmbH; ARM
Embedded Solutions Pvt. Ltd.; and ARM Physical IP, Inc.

    For more information, please contact: 

     Jean Anne Booth
     CMO
     Mobile: [phone] 
     Tel:    [phone] 
     Email:  [e-mail]

     Karen Johnson
     Mobile: [phone]
     Tel:    [phone]
     Email:  [e-mail]

SOURCE  Luminary Micro, Inc.