TI intros Stellaris ARM Cortex-M4F MCUs

AUSTIN, USA: Continuing to empower developers with leading ARM-based embedded processing solutions, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announced the new low power, floating-point Stellaris Cortex-M4F microcontroller generation.

All of the new LM4Fx Stellaris microcontrollers provide floating point for performance headroom and best-in-class power consumption to address portability and power budgets. Developers can also select from a variety of high-performance analog, memory and connectivity options to best satisfy design parameters across a broad range of applications, such as industrial automation, motion control, health and fitness and more.

The new Stellaris MCUs are the first Cortex-M-based microcontrollers to be built on 65 nanometer (nm) technology, paving the roadmap to higher speeds, larger memory and even lower power.

To ease design and speed time to market, TI's free license and royalty-free StellarisWare software is available for download and is unmatched in breadth and ease-of-use. StellarisWare software includes hundreds of example projects, application and peripheral libraries and open source stacks. To conserve flash memory, TI also offers the software pre-loaded in ROM. Supported by five popular IDEs, Stellaris microcontroller kits jumpstart design in 10 minutes or less. Developers can easily scale designs and reuse code across the entire code compatible Stellaris Cortex-M microcontroller platform.

Features and benefits of the Stellaris Cortex-M4F MCU platform
* ARM Cortex-M4F floating-point core operating at up to 80 MHz to provide targeted performance headroom for application differentiation.
* Two high-performance 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and three comparators support mixed-signal applications.
* 12-bit ADC accuracy is achievable at the full 1 MSPS rating without any hardware averaging, eliminating any performance tradeoffs.
* Lowest-power Stellaris microcontrollers – with standby currents now as low as 1.6 uA – enable longer battery life and support constrained power budgets.
* Connectivity options including USB (host, device and On-The-Go), UARTs, I2C, SSI/SPI and CAN to support communications.
* Integrated EEPROM supports high-endurance non-volatile storage of user interface or configuration parameters to reduce system cost.
* Complemented by TI's extensive portfolio of analog power management products to optimize system power efficiency.
* Options for up to 256KB flash and 32KB SRAM to address varying application needs.
* Code compatibility allows system designers to easily scale designs across more than 220 Stellaris Cortex-M microcontrollers.