Luminary Micro Launches 34 New Stellaris Microcontrollers Including the First Offering of Real-Time Internetworking and IEEE 1588 Support with the ARM Cortex -M3 Processor

Additions to the Award-Winning Stellaris Family Also Include High Pin Count Real-Time MCUs for Low-Power Battery-Backed Applications

AUSTIN, TX, USA – September 18, 2007 – Luminary Micro (www.luminarymicro.com), creator of the award-winning Stellaris family of ARM® Cortex™-M3-based microcontrollers (MCUs), introduced today 34 new Stellaris microcontrollers (MCUs), bringing innovative networking and expanded control capabilities for real-time applications in motion control, fire and security, remote sensing, 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.

Introduced today are 20 members of the Stellaris LM3S1000 high pin count real-time MCU series, 11 members of the Stellaris LM3S8000 Ethernet+CAN internetworking series, and 3 new members of the Stellaris LM3S6000 Ethernet series featuring hardware assist for IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) support. These new MCUs extend the world-class benefits of the Stellaris family with real-time networking, larger on-chip memories, enhanced power management, and expanded I/O capabilities. Evaluation kits for the new MCUs are available immediately through Luminary Micro's global sales channel (www.luminarymicro.com/sales). All of the new MCUs are sampling today and will be available in volume production later this quarter.

The LM3S1000 series feature new combinations of expanded general purpose I/O, larger on-chip memory, and low-power optimization for battery-backed applications. The LM3S8000 series are the first MCUs in the world featuring a fully-integrated 10/100 Mbps Ethernet with Controller Area Network (CAN) connectivity in a single-chip solution with ARM architecture compatibility. The LM3S8000 devices combine both Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) layers with up to 3 CAN interfaces on-chip, marking the first time that integrated internetworking connectivity is available with an ARM Cortex-M3 MCU. Professional-grade motion control hardware is included in many of the new configurations, providing some of the industry's most powerful solutions for connected motion applications.

"Today's introductions affirm Luminary Micro's commitment to lead innovation with the revolutionary Cortex-M3 core," said Chief Marketing Officer Jean Anne Booth. "The Stellaris family is the most extensive family of Cotex-M3 products in the industry, and today we are adding two more firsts to our roster by bringing the first single-chip fully-integrated Ethernet and CAN internetworking capability to designers previously limited to 8- and 16-bit options, and by providing the first microcontrollers with hardware assist for IEEE 1588 PTP support."

"$1 to 1 GHz" in the World's Best Development Ecosystem

Stellaris family MCUs are based on the ARM Cortex-M3 processor, the microcontroller member of the ARM Cortex processor family. Designed for serious microcontroller applications, the Stellaris family provides entry into the industry's strongest ecosystem, with code compatibility ranging from $1 to 1 GHz. Additional advantages include:

• Easy and cost-effective to upgrade from 8- and 16-bit applications, requiring less flash code space and delivering a 10x improvement in performance over 8051 cores and an 8x improvement in performance over PIC24F cores;
• Extends ARM7 family processor capabilities in critical MCU applications with a 4x improvement in control processing performance, real-time interrupt response capability, and predictable deterministic interrupt behavior, while typically requiring just half the flash code space of ARM7 control applications;
• Greater than 50 MIPS with a demonstrable 20x performance roadmap in the Cortex processor family, allowing for a "no-worry" migration path;
• Best-in-industry development environment and debug tools.

Ground-Breaking Integration: First MCUs with Hardware-Assisted IEEE 1588 PTP Support

Three of the new Stellaris LM3S6000 Ethernet series MCUs and six of the new Stellaris LM3S8000 Ethernet+CAN internetworking MCUs feature hardware assist for IEEE 1588 PTP support. The IEEE 1588 standard provides a mechanism for synchronizing distributed real-time clocks in a packet-based multicast network such as Ethernet. Time-based synchronization is the preferred method for synchronizing control systems (especially motion control) over networks because it is not as susceptible to jitter as other synchronization methods and is also based on absolute time, making it easier to program. Additional benefits of this standard include the use of inexpensive network components, fault tolerance, hot plugging capability, and self-configuration. Networked variable frequency drives require synchronization accuracy in the tens of milliseconds, and servo-controlled systems require accuracy in the few hundreds of nanoseconds. Stellaris implementations using the open source lwIP TCP/IP stack and open source 1588 PTPd stack achieve within 500nS synchronization accuracy, a greater than ten fold improvement over typical software-only implementations.

Stellaris Offers Unprecedented Integration for Internetworking Applications

Eleven of the new MCUs feature both on-chip Ethernet MAC and PHY and up to 3 integrated CAN controllers, making Stellaris the only ARM-based MCU to offer this useful combination for real-time internetworking applications. With Ethernet features including 10/100 Mbps full and half-duplex operation, automatic MDI/MDI-X cross-over correction, programmable MAC address, promiscuous mode support, and generous single-cycle 2KB transmit and 2KB receive buffers, and Bosch-licensed CAN controllers featuring bit rates up to 1 Mbps, 32 message objects per controller, and automatic transmission disable for TTCAN (time-triggered communication on CAN), the powerful communications capabilities in the LM3S8000 series offer more options for both control and internetworking applications.

New Stellaris MCUs Optimized for Battery-Backed Applications

Thirty-two of the new MCUs feature a battery-backed hibernation module that includes a real-time clock, a generous 256 bytes of non-volatile battery-backed memory, and the ability to wake on a real-time clock match, external pin interrupt, or low battery event. Even using the real-time clock in hibernate mode, a standard CR2032 watch battery can support a Stellaris microcontroller in hibernate mode for over 3 years.

Evaluation Kits Have Developers Up and Running In 10 Minutes Or Less

This announcement includes the immediate availability of two complete evaluation kits: the Stellaris LM3S1968 Evaluation Kit (US$ 59) and the Stellaris LM3S8962 Ethernet+CAN Evaluation Kit (US$ 89). Each feature-rich evaluation kit includes evaluation boards, all required cables, a choice of evaluation tools suites for popular development tools, documentation, the Stellaris Peripheral Driver Library (providing a convenient, no-hassle method of initializing, programming, and controlling peripherals), applications notes, and everything a developer needs to get up and running in 10 minutes or less, for a superb "out-of-the-box" experience. Both kits span the design spectrum from evaluation to prototyping to application-specific design by functioning both as an evaluation platform and as a serial in-circuit debug interface for any Stellaris microcontroller-based target board.

Evaluation tools suite choices for the kits include ARM RealView® Microcontroller Development kit (MDK), IAR Embedded Workbench® Kickstart Edition, and CodeSourcery Sourcery G++™ GNU tools. In addition, ported demos of RTOSes include FreeRTOS.org™, Micrium µC/OS-II with µC/Probe embedded system monitoring, Express Logic ThreadX®, CMX Systems CMX-RTX™, Keil™ RTX, IAR PowerPac™, and SEGGER embOS. Communications stacks available for the Stellaris LM3S8962 Ethernet+CAN Evaluation Kit include Express Logic NetX™ TCP/IP; InterNiche TCP/IP NicheStack™, NicheLITE™, and add-on modules such as HTTP, SNMP, and security protocols; CMX Systems CMX-MicroNet™ and CMX-CANopen™; FreeRTOS.org-based open source uIP stack; Micrium µC/TCP-IP, µC/Modbus and µC/CAN; and RTA Automation EtherNET/IP™ and DeviceNet™.

For detailed information on the features of each Stellaris family member, see www.luminarymicro.com/product_selector_guide.

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 award-winning 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.