TI acquires Luminary Micro

...

A slightly strange move, as TI _already_ had Cortex-M3 licenses in their stable (and has done since 2006...)

The spin seems to not match reality, (Did ARM really not know TI had M3 already?!) and one suspects ARM's shareholding here caused some conflict of interest problems, so could have had more influence in the sale.

So, seems much more like a share deal / cashing up, than any commercial/marketing decision.

NXP are moving on a M0, which will take some M3 markets, and have just released

Other M3 vendors, who we wait on silicon from are Atmel (AT91SAM3) and Zilog.

Did the Zilog M3 survive the latest carve-up's there ?

-jg

There are many other reasons to buy a company than to get their tech. More likely TI wants to better dominate the market segment in which Luminary was strong, by having one less strong competitor.

When a company gets acquired, often the best talent moves on and you lose the tech in the washup anyhow.