Electronics News: Texas Instruments buys Luminary Micro of semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments announced the purchase from Luminary Micro. The company, manufacturer of ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers, was previously privately owned. A purchase price was not known. The only 55 employees has strong start-up companies in Austin, Texas, products such as the Stellaris MCU series large companies such as ST Microelectronics, NXP, and in the past successfully face shown. Texas instruments is already since a long time partner of ARM, but only in the area of application processors Cortex-A8 and cortex-A9, which are used E.g. in the OMAP chips. In the area of the ARM based microcontrollers, TI had only a big black hole that is now filled with the Luminary Micro products.

The company itself arrives as an independent business unit in TI and remains in Austin, Texas. The official name is”TI AEC Austin are. Jim Reinhart, until now CEO of Luminary Micro, is General Manager for the ARM MCU business. Through the acquisition by Texas The target group for the Stellaris microcontrollers has grown due instruments through the global marketing and sales organization by TI many times. The MCUs target on cost-sensitive applications including in the fields of automation and medical engineering, need also an extensive Pheripherieausstattung in addition to high performance. Daryl Katz is likely to agree. Arm, applauded the acquisition.

Reinhard Keil, Director of MCU tools at ARM, said that instruments and Luminary Micro well Texas complement one another and that the Cortex-M3 processor would find access to other markets. Mike Inglis, General Manager of the processors arm, Division has pointed out, that Luminary Micro was the first licensee of the Cortex-M3 and achieved many significant design wins. He regards the acquisition by Texas instruments then as a commitment by TI to the Cortex-M3.