$1 microcontroller features ARM Cortex core

Start-up Luminary Micro is the first company to bring to market a microcontroller that incorporates ARM's Cortex core. According to Jean Anne Booth, Luminary's founder and chief marketing officer, the inspiration for starting the company came from the realization that it could build and sell an ARM device for $1.

The first two parts from Luminary are the LM3S101 and 102, part of the Stellaris family, which uses the Cortex-M3 core. Targeting embedded- and industrial-system applications, the Cortex-M3 features deterministic operations and a 32-bit architecture. The deterministic response to interrupts enables real-time embedded control, and the devices have enough power to combine functions that users might previously have embedded in a sensor-interface microcontroller and a separate control microcontroller. The device touts 1.2-Dhrystone-MIPS/MHz performance, and the first parts will run at 20 MHz.

The devices use the ARM Thumb 2 instruction set, enabling users to employ an ARM tool chain. Luminary provides a $775 development kit that the company claims allows users to get the package running within 10 minutes. Tool support is available from ARM, Keil, and CodeSourcery. A free RTOS and online-tool support from IAR are also available. The 28-pin LM3S101 includes 8 kbytes of flash memory and 2 kbytes of SRAM. You can reallocate unused pins to general-purpose I/O for added flexibility, and the chip has its own low-dropout-voltage regulator.