xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/iicbus.4 (revision 1603881667360c015f6685131f2f25474fa67a72)
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd March 7, 2021
28.Dt IICBUS 4
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm iicbus
32.Nd I2C bus system
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Cd "device iicbus"
35.Cd "device iicbb"
36.Pp
37.Cd "device iic"
38.Cd "device ic"
39.Cd "device iicsmb"
40.Sh DESCRIPTION
41The
42.Em iicbus
43system provides a uniform, modular and architecture-independent
44system for the implementation of drivers to control various I2C devices
45and to utilize different I2C controllers.
46.Sh I2C
47I2C is an acronym for Inter Integrated Circuit bus.
48The I2C bus was developed
49in the early 1980's by Philips semiconductors.
50Its purpose was to provide an
51easy way to connect a CPU to peripheral chips in a TV-set.
52.Pp
53The BUS physically consists of 2 active wires and a ground connection.
54The active wires, SDA and SCL, are both bidirectional.
55Where SDA is the
56Serial DAta line and SCL is the Serial CLock line.
57.Pp
58Every component hooked up to the bus has its own unique address whether it
59is a CPU, LCD driver, memory, or complex function chip.
60Each of these chips
61can act as a receiver and/or transmitter depending on its functionality.
62Obviously an LCD driver is only a receiver, while a memory or I/O chip can
63both be transmitter and receiver.
64Furthermore there may be one or
65more BUS MASTERs.
66.Pp
67The BUS MASTER is the chip issuing the commands on the BUS.
68In the I2C protocol
69specification it is stated that the IC that initiates a data transfer on the
70bus is considered the BUS MASTER.
71At that time all the others are regarded to
72as the BUS SLAVEs.
73As mentioned before, the IC bus is a Multi-MASTER BUS.
74This means that more than one IC capable of initiating data transfer can be
75connected to it.
76.Sh DEVICES
77Some I2C device drivers are available:
78.Pp
79.Bl -column "Device drivers" -compact
80.It Em Devices Ta Em Description
81.It Sy iic Ta "general i/o operation"
82.It Sy ic Ta "network IP interface"
83.It Sy iicsmb Ta "I2C to SMB software bridge"
84.El
85.Sh INTERFACES
86The I2C protocol may be implemented by hardware or software.
87Software
88interfaces rely on very simple hardware, usually two lines
89twiddled by 2 registers.
90Hardware interfaces are more intelligent and receive
918-bit characters they write to the bus according to the I2C protocol.
92.Pp
93I2C interfaces may act on the bus as slave devices, allowing spontaneous
94bidirectional communications, thanks to the multi-master capabilities of the
95I2C protocol.
96.Pp
97Some I2C interfaces are available:
98.Pp
99.Bl -column "Interface drivers" -compact
100.It Em Interface Ta Em Description
101.It Sy pcf Ta "Philips PCF8584 master/slave interface"
102.It Sy iicbb Ta "generic bit-banging master-only driver"
103.It Sy lpbb Ta "parallel port specific bit-banging interface"
104.El
105.Sh BUS FREQUENCY CONFIGURATION
106The operating frequency of an I2C bus may be fixed or configurable.
107The bus may be used as part of some larger standard interface, and that
108interface specification may require a fixed frequency.
109The driver for that hardware would not honor an attempt to configure a
110different speed.
111A general purpose I2C bus, such as those found in many embedded systems,
112will often support multiple bus frequencies.
113.Pp
114When a system supports multiple I2C buses, a different frequency can
115be configured for each bus by number, represented by the
116.Va %d
117in the variable names below.
118Buses can be configured using any combination of device hints,
119Flattened Device Tree (FDT) data, tunables set via
120.Xr loader 8 ,
121or at runtime using
122.Xr sysctl 8 .
123When configuration is supplied using more than one method, FDT and
124hint data will be overridden by a tunable, which can be overridden by
125.Xr sysctl 8 .
126.Ss Device Hints
127Set
128.Va hint.iicbus.%d.frequency
129to the frequency in Hz, on systems that use device hints to configure
130I2C devices.
131The hint is also honored by systems that use FDT data if
132no frequency is configured using FDT.
133.Ss Flattened Device Tree Data
134Configure the I2C bus speed using the FDT standard
135.Va clock-frequency
136property of the node describing the I2C controller hardware.
137.Ss Sysctl and Tunable
138Set
139.Va dev.iicbus.%d.frequency
140in
141.Xr loader.conf 5 .
142The same variable can be changed at any time with
143.Xr sysctl 8 .
144Reset the bus using
145.Xr i2c 8
146or the
147.Xr iic 4
148.Va I2CRSTCARD
149ioctl to make the change take effect.
150.Sh SEE ALSO
151.Xr fdt 4 ,
152.Xr iic 4 ,
153.Xr iicbb 4 ,
154.Xr lpbb 4 ,
155.Xr pcf 4 ,
156.Xr i2c 8
157.Sh HISTORY
158The
159.Nm
160manual page first appeared in
161.Fx 3.0 .
162.Sh AUTHORS
163This
164manual page was written by
165.An Nicolas Souchu .
166