50 MHz Cortex-M3 — what it means for the control loop
The LM3S818-IQN50-C2 is a Texas Instruments Stellaris ARM Cortex-M3 MCU clocked at 50 MHz with 64 KB of Flash and 8 KB of RAM. That 50 MHz core on a single-cycle multiply architecture handles a 10 kHz current-control loop with margin for the comms stack.
Peripherals and connectivity
On-chip peripherals include brown-out detect, POR, PWM, and a watchdog timer — enough for a self-monitoring controller without an external supervisor. Connectivity covers Microwire, QEI (for quadrature encoder feedback), SPI, SSI, and UART/USART. The 30 I/O pins in the 48-LQFP leave room for a keypad, status LEDs, and a few discrete signals alongside the serial buses.