Texas Instruments Buys Luminary Micro

  

May 14, 2009 - Texas Instruments announced today that it has acquired the microcontroller company Luminary Micro for an undisclosed sum.

Luminary Micro is best known for being the first licensee of the 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 core. Luminary Micro offers low-cost microcontrollers with the ARM Cortex core with a wide range of connectivity options including MAC+PHY Ethernet, USB, and CAN.

Luminary Micro's portfolio of microcontrollers are immediately available for ordering through the Texas Instrument sales network. The Stellaris product family will continue to be sold under the Stellaris name, and part numbers will remain the same.

Texas Instruments plans to integrate the Stellaris family of microcontrollers into their existing software development tool environments later this year.

My Analysis
Luminary Micros's Stellaris family of microcontrollers are presently manufactured at TSMC. Pricing at 3rd party wafer fabs are based upon volume - the more you sell, the lower the manufacturing cost. With the extreme volume power of Texas Instruments and their leading-edge wafer processes, expect the Stellaris family of microcontrollers to achieve lower cost, increased functionality, and use even less current than today's Stellaris MCUs.

Company Information
Texas Instruments presently sells the MSP430 16-bit extremely low power Flash microcontroller family, one of the most wildly popular microcontroller architectures in the industry.

Texas Instruments is based in Houston, Texas. Luminary Micro has been based in Austin, Texas. Luminary will continue to operate the Cortex-M3 out of Austin Texas, and will now be known as TI AEC Austin.