What this Stellaris MCU brings to the board
The Texas Instruments LM3S9B96-IQC80-C1T is a Stellaris ARM Cortex-M3-based 32-bit single-core MCU running at 80 MHz with 256 KB Flash and 96 KB RAM. It integrates Ethernet MAC, USB OTG, CANbus, and 65 general-purpose I/O in a 100-LQFP package.
The 80 MHz core clock on this Cortex-M3 gives enough headroom to handle Ethernet TCP/IP offload, USB OTG host/device negotiation, and CAN message filtering without a separate protocol coprocessor. For a control gateway that polls a dozen Modbus slaves and serves a web interface, that throughput keeps the loop jitter under a few microseconds — no need to step up to a Cortex-M4 unless you need DSP math.
Texas Instruments has marked the LM3S9B96-IQC80-C1T as obsolete. No official successor part number is listed. For existing designs, the only channel is the surplus and broker market. We source this part to order against an RFQ.