Documentation/driver-api/i2c.rst
Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/driver-api/i2c.rst
File Facts
- System
- Linux kernel
- Corpus path
Documentation/driver-api/i2c.rst- Extension
.rst- Size
- 2403 bytes
- Lines
- 49
- Domain
- Support Tooling And Documentation
- Bucket
- Documentation
- Inferred role
- Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
- Status
- atlas-only
Why This File Exists
Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Defines or uses C structs; map object ownership, embedded links, reference counts, and lock ownership.
Dependency Surface
- No C-style include directives detected by the generator.
Detected Declarations
- No top-level syscall, struct, function, initcall, or export declaration detected by the generator.
Annotated Snippet
I\ :sup:`2`\ C and SMBus Subsystem
==================================
I\ :sup:`2`\ C (or without fancy typography, "I2C") is an acronym for
the "Inter-IC" bus, a simple bus protocol which is widely used where low
data rate communications suffice. Since it's also a licensed trademark,
some vendors use another name (such as "Two-Wire Interface", TWI) for
the same bus. I2C only needs two signals (SCL for clock, SDA for data),
conserving board real estate and minimizing signal quality issues. Most
I2C devices use seven bit addresses, and bus speeds of up to 400 kHz;
there's a high speed extension (3.4 MHz) that's not yet found wide use.
I2C is a multi-master bus; open drain signaling is used to arbitrate
between masters, as well as to handshake and to synchronize clocks from
slower clients.
The Linux I2C programming interfaces support the master side of bus
interactions and the slave side. The programming interface is
structured around two kinds of driver, and two kinds of device. An I2C
"Adapter Driver" abstracts the controller hardware; it binds to a
physical device (perhaps a PCI device or platform_device) and exposes a
:c:type:`struct i2c_adapter <i2c_adapter>` representing each
I2C bus segment it manages. On each I2C bus segment will be I2C devices
represented by a :c:type:`struct i2c_client <i2c_client>`.
Those devices will be bound to a :c:type:`struct i2c_driver
<i2c_driver>`, which should follow the standard Linux driver model. There
are functions to perform various I2C protocol operations; at this writing
all such functions are usable only from task context.
The System Management Bus (SMBus) is a sibling protocol. Most SMBus
systems are also I2C conformant. The electrical constraints are tighter
for SMBus, and it standardizes particular protocol messages and idioms.
Controllers that support I2C can also support most SMBus operations, but
SMBus controllers don't support all the protocol options that an I2C
controller will. There are functions to perform various SMBus protocol
operations, either using I2C primitives or by issuing SMBus commands to
i2c_adapter devices which don't support those I2C operations.
.. kernel-doc:: include/linux/i2c.h
:internal:
.. kernel-doc:: drivers/i2c/i2c-boardinfo.c
:functions: i2c_register_board_info
.. kernel-doc:: drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c
:export:
.. kernel-doc:: drivers/i2c/i2c-core-smbus.c
:export:
Annotation
- Atlas domain: Support Tooling And Documentation / Documentation.
- Implementation status: atlas-only.
Implementation Notes
- This generated page is the file-by-file coverage layer; curated subsystem chapters should link here when they synthesize a multi-file control flow.
- Core OS pages should be promoted from atlas-only to deep-reviewed when they explain data structures, invariants, locking, lifecycle, and C implementation snippets.
- Driver-family pages are intentionally pattern-oriented unless they are part of the selected PCIe/NVMe representative device path.