MCU expansion for networking and control

Latest additions to Stellaris MCU family comprise 34 devices with networking and control capabilities for real-time applications.

Luminary Micro has added 34 new microcontrollers to its Stellaris MCU family, featuring networking and 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.

New devices comprise 20 members of the Stellaris LM3S1000 high-pin-count real-time MCU series, 11 members of the Stellaris LM3S8000 Ethernet+CAN internetworking series, and three new members of the Stellaris LM3S6000 Ethernet series featuring hardware assist for IEEE1588 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.

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 optimisation for battery-backed applications.

The LM3S8000 series are the first MCUs in the world featuring a fully-integrated 10/100Mbit/s 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 three 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", says 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 16bit options, and by providing the first microcontrollers with hardware assist for IEEE1588 PTP support".

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 US $1 to 1GHz.

Additional advantages include: easy and cost-effective to upgrade from 8 and 16bit 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; extended 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 behaviour, while typically requiring just half the flash code space of ARM7 control applications; greater than 50MIPS with a demonstrable 20x performance roadmap in the Cortex processor family, allowing for a "no-worry" migration path; and best-in-industry development environment and debug tools.

Three of the new Stellaris LM3S6000 Ethernet series MCUs and six of the new Stellaris LM3S8000 Ethernet+CAN internetworking MCUs feature hardware assist for IEEE1588 PTP support.

The IEEE1588 standard provides a mechanism for synchronising distributed real-time clocks in a packet-based multicast network such as Ethernet.

Time-based synchronisation is the preferred method for synchronising control systems (especially motion control) over networks because it is not as susceptible to jitter as other synchronisation 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 synchronisation 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 synchronisation accuracy, a greater than ten fold improvement over typical software-only implementations.

Eleven of the new MCUs feature both on-chip Ethernet MAC and PHY and up to three integrated CAN controllers, making Stellaris the only ARM-based MCU to offer this useful combination for real-time internetworking applications.

With Ethernet features including 10/100Mbit/s full and half-duplex operation, automatic MDI/MDI-X crossover correction, programmable MAC address, promiscuous mode support, and generous single-cycle 2Kbyte transmit and 2Kbyte receive buffers, and Bosch-licensed CAN controllers featuring bit rates up to 1Mbit/s, 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.

Thirty-two of the new MCUs feature a battery-backed hibernation module that includes a real-time clock, a generous 256 bytes of nonvolatile 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.

Also available now are 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 evaluationboards, 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 initialising, 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 RTOSs include FreeRTOS.org, Micrium uC/OS-II with uC/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 addon modules such as HTTP, SNMP, and security protocols; CMX Systems CMX-MicroNet and CMX-CANopen; FreeRTOS.org-based open source uIP stack; Micrium uC/TCP-IP, uC/Modbus and uC/CAN; and RTA Automation EtherNET/IP and DeviceNet.

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