Documentation/i2c/i2c-protocol.rst
Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/i2c/i2c-protocol.rst
File Facts
- System
- Linux kernel
- Corpus path
Documentation/i2c/i2c-protocol.rst- Extension
.rst- Size
- 3096 bytes
- Lines
- 97
- 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.
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
================
The I2C Protocol
================
This document is an overview of the basic I2C transactions and the kernel
APIs to perform them.
Key to symbols
==============
=============== =============================================================
S Start condition
P Stop condition
Rd/Wr (1 bit) Read/Write bit. Rd equals 1, Wr equals 0.
A, NA (1 bit) Acknowledge (ACK) and Not Acknowledge (NACK) bit
Addr (7 bits) I2C 7 bit address. Note that this can be expanded to
get a 10 bit I2C address.
Data (8 bits) A plain data byte.
[..] Data sent by I2C device, as opposed to data sent by the
host adapter.
=============== =============================================================
Simple send transaction
=======================
Implemented by i2c_master_send()::
S Addr Wr [A] Data [A] Data [A] ... [A] Data [A] P
Simple receive transaction
==========================
Implemented by i2c_master_recv()::
S Addr Rd [A] [Data] A [Data] A ... A [Data] NA P
Combined transactions
=====================
Implemented by i2c_transfer().
They are just like the above transactions, but instead of a stop
condition P a start condition S is sent and the transaction continues.
An example of a byte read, followed by a byte write::
S Addr Rd [A] [Data] NA S Addr Wr [A] Data [A] P
Modified transactions
=====================
The following modifications to the I2C protocol can also be generated by
setting these flags for I2C messages. With the exception of I2C_M_NOSTART, they
are usually only needed to work around device issues:
I2C_M_IGNORE_NAK:
Normally message is interrupted immediately if there is [NA] from the
client. Setting this flag treats any [NA] as [A], and all of
message is sent.
These messages may still fail to SCL lo->hi timeout.
I2C_M_NO_RD_ACK:
In a read message, master A/NA bit is skipped.
I2C_M_NOSTART:
In a combined transaction, no 'S Addr Wr/Rd [A]' is generated at some
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.