Intel® Arria® 10 Hard Processor System Technical Reference Manual

ID 683711
Date 1/10/2023
Public

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21.4.2. Behavior

You can control the I2C controller via software to be in either mode:

  • An I2C master only, communicating with other I2C slaves.
  • An I2C slave only, communicating with one or more I2C masters.

The master is responsible for generating the clock and controlling the transfer of data. The slave is responsible for either transmitting or receiving data to/from the master. The acknowledgement of data is sent by the device that is receiving data, which can be either a master or a slave. As mentioned previously, the I2C protocol also allows multiple masters to reside on the I2C bus and uses an arbitration procedure to determine bus ownership. †

Each slave has a unique address that is determined by the system designer. When a master wants to communicate with a slave, the master transmits a START/RESTART condition that is then followed by the slave's address and a control bit (R/W) to determine if the master wants to transmit data or receive data from the slave. The slave then sends an acknowledge (ACK) pulse after the address. †

If the master (master-transmitter) is writing to the slave (slave-receiver), the receiver receives one byte of data. This transaction continues until the master terminates the transmission with a STOP condition. If the master is reading from a slave (master‑receiver), the slave transmits (slave-transmitter) a byte of data to the master, and the master then acknowledges the transaction with an ACK pulse. This transaction continues until the master terminates the transmission by not acknowledging (NACK) the transaction after the last byte is received, and then the master issues a STOP condition or addresses another slave after issuing a RESTART condition. †

Figure 125. Data Transfer on the I2C Bus †

The I2C controller is a synchronous serial interface. The SDA line is a bidirectional signal and changes only while the SCL line is low, except for STOP, START, and RESTART conditions. The output drivers are open-drain or open-collector to perform wire-AND functions on the bus. The maximum number of devices on the bus is limited by only the maximum capacitance specification of 400 pF. Data is transmitted in byte packages. †