Luminary Micro Announces Availability of Thirteen New Stellaris(TM) 32-bit Microcontrollers Based on ARM® Cortex(TM)-M3 Core
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 25 / - Luminary Micro (http://www.luminarymicro.com/ ), a fabless semiconductor company that designs, markets, and sells ARM® 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 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® 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® 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:
o Optimized for single cycle flash usage
o Deterministic, fast interrupt processing - never more than 12 cycles,
only 6 cycles with tail-chaining
o Three sleep modes with clock gating for low power
o Single cycle multiply and multiply-accumulate instructions
o Native ARM Thumb2 mixed 16-/32-bit instruction set - no mode switching
o Superior debug features including data watchpoints and flash patching
o Atomic bit manipulation operations - read/modify/write in a single instruction
o 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:
o Entire software code base is written in C/C++ - no assembly language
required, even in startup code and interrupt service handlers
o Occupies half the flash code size of ARM7TDMI MCU applications
o Real MCU GPIOs - all can generate interrupts, all have programmable
drive strength and slew rate control
o 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
o Advanced motion control support in hardware and software
o 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 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 www.luminarymicro.com/ or through Mouser at www.mouser.com/luminarymicro . Contact Luminary Micro at 1-512-279-8800 or email sales@luminarymicro.com 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 press@luminarymicro.com for more information. Complete press kits including photos are available for download at www.luminarymicro.com/Press/25July06Launch .
Company Contact:
Jean Anne Booth
CMO
512.917.3088 mobile
512.279.8801 office
JeanAnne.Booth@luminarymicro.com
Source: Luminary Micro, Inc.
Web site: www.luminarymicro.com/ www.luminarymicro.com/products/product_selector_guide.html
http://www.mouser.com/luminarymicro
http://www.luminarymicro.com/Press/25July06Launch
