Luminary Micro is no more

[Tony-12]

it's now Texas Instruments AEC Austin.  Press release here: http://www.luminarymicro.com/press/ti_acquires_luminary_micro.html

TI has done a good job with its more recent acquisitions (e.g. Burr-Brown) and the Stellaris line complements the TI's existing high performance (OMAP) and automotive-oriented (TMS470) ARM chips.

--Tony

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[BogdanM]

Am I the only one to be shocked by this? It was completely unexpected for me. I'm very curious to see what will come from this, in any case.

Best,
Bogdan

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 2:04 AM, Tony <[hidden email]> wrote:

it's now Texas Instruments AEC Austin.  Press release here: http://www.luminarymicro.com/press/ti_acquires_luminary_micro.html

TI has done a good job with its more recent acquisitions (e.g. Burr-Brown) and the Stellaris line complements the TI's existing high performance (OMAP) and automotive-oriented (TMS470) ARM chips.

--Tony

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[jbsnyder]

I don't think I heard any murmurs about this before I got an email from LM, and my response on reading that was pretty much along the lines of WTF?!

I suppose it makes sense for TI to pick up a successful Cortex-M3 designer to expand their current ARM offerings. TI seems to be pretty hobbyist friendly from what I can tell, including the Beagle Board.

It'll be interesting to see how they change their policies (including the device driver licensing) as they become a division of TI.

-jsnyder

On May 15, 2009, at 3:19 AM, Bogdan Marinescu wrote:

Am I the only one to be shocked by this? It was completely unexpected for me. I'm very curious to see what will come from this, in any case.

Best,
Bogdan

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 2:04 AM, Tony <[hidden email]> wrote:

it's now Texas Instruments AEC Austin.  Press release here: http://www.luminarymicro.com/press/ti_acquires_luminary_micro.html

TI has done a good job with its more recent acquisitions (e.g. Burr-Brown) and the Stellaris line complements the TI's existing high performance (OMAP) and automotive-oriented (TMS470) ARM chips.

--Tony

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--

James Snyder

Biomedical Engineering

Northwestern University

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[Jesus Alvarez]

It shouldn't be a surprise. In today's market it is challenging for a
fabless semiconductor company to open up a new market. Luminary was
sponsored by ARM, started the Cortex-M3 market and developed a good MCU
product line. But they needed more resources to take their products to the
next level. The Cortex-M3 market is getting more crowded now that NXP, ST
Micro and others are pursuing it strongly. Luminary will benefit from TI's
resources and manufacturing capabilities to keep growing. They will operate
as an independent business unit so most of the entrepreneurial spirit should
remain. I have had very good experiences with TI in the past and see this as
a very positive event for all products using Luminary MCUs.

According to this post on the Barron's blog, TI is also looking at Atmel.
Even if this does not materialize, it does indicate TI's strategy to take
advantage of the low valuations in this recession to purchase product lines
that will lead to future growth.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/05/14/atmel-shrs-fly-on-rumors
-of-texas-instruments-bid/
Atmel Shares Fly On Rumors Of Texas Instruments Bid

Regards,
Jesus Alvarez


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[Tony-12]

OK, based on this http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=217700401 information it's a good thing TI bought Luminary.  US$5 million a year in sales?  That's marginal (and I'm surprised its so low - heck, IIRC that's even less than Zilog).  With TI's support, they should be able to increase that by a lot.

I admit I'm much more likely to use the Stellaris parts now that they're TI parts.

A TI/Atmel merger would make more sense than TI + anybody else big, but there would  be a fair amount of overlap.  Another option the article didn't mention is TI buying just the MCU line of somebody (e.g. NXP) -- probably won't happen, but a couple of years ago Sharp sold just their Bluestreak ARM MCU line to NXP.

--Tony

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