Brian Crutcher, vice president of TI's advanced embedded control (AEC) business, said the acquisition of Luminary Micro and its Stellaris products fills a hole in TI's MCU product portfolio and would allow TI to address the mainstream 32-bit MCU market. TI is now in position to offer customers a single source of MCUs for nearly every application, Crutcher said.

"Cortex-M3 is gaining momentum in the market," Cutcher said. "We saw this as an opportunity to fill a hole."

Luminary Micro becomes a business unit within TI's AEC business. It will remain based in Austin, Texas, and be known as will be known as TI AEC Austin. Jim Reinhart, formerly CEO of Luminary Micro, becomes general manager of TI's Catalog ARM MCU business.

"In terms of fit, I don't think there is a better fit in the industry for what we do," Reinhart said of the acquisition by TI, which he further described as a "remarkable opportunity."

The acquisition will give the Stellaris family access to far reaching technology and "credibility with our customers that our products will be around forever," Reinhart said.

The Stellaris family is geared toward cost-conscious applications requiring significant control processing and connectivity capabilities. Stellaris devices target applications in the transaction control, automation, building control and medical spaces. The Stellaris family was a 2007 finalist for the EE Times ACE Awards ultimate products in the Processors/Memory category.

The recently-announced fourth generation of Stellaris devices, the LM3S9000 series, claims advances in general purpose processing performance and new combinations of connectivity, memory configurations and advanced motion control.

According to TI (Dallas), the company's product line now includes a total of more than 300 16- and 32-bit MCUs.