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21.3.3. Clock Low Extension
SMBus provides a clock synchronization mechanism, similar to I2C, which allows devices with different
speed capabilities to coexist on the bus. A clock-low extension is used during a transfer in order to allow
slower slave devices to communicate with faster masters. The slave may temporarily hold the SCL line
LOW to extend the clock low period, effectively decreasing the serial clock frequency.
21.3.4. SCL Low Timeout
If the SCL line is held low by a slave device on the bus, no further communication is possible. Furthermore,
the master cannot force the SCL line high to correct the error condition. To solve this problem, the SMBus
protocol specifies that devices participating in a transfer must detect any clock cycle held low longer than
25 ms as a “timeout” condition. Devices that have detected the timeout condition must reset the communi-
cation no later than 10 ms after detecting the timeout condition.
When the SMBTOE bit in SMB0CF is set, Timer 3 is used to detect SCL low timeouts. Timer 3 is forced to
reload when SCL is high, and allowed to count when SCL is low. With Timer 3 enabled and configured to
overflow after 25 ms (and SMBTOE set), the Timer 3 interrupt service routine can be used to reset (disable
and re-enable) the SMBus in the event of an SCL low timeout.
21.3.5. SCL High (SMBus Free) Timeout
The SMBus specification stipulates that if the SCL and SDA lines remain high for more that 50 µs, the bus
is designated as free. When the SMBFTE bit in SMB0CF is set, the bus will be considered free if SCL and
SDA remain high for more than 10 SMBus clock source periods (as defined by the timer configured for the
SMBus clock source). If the SMBus is waiting to generate a Master START, the START will be generated
following this timeout. Note that a clock source is required for free timeout detection, even in a slave-only
implementation.
21.4. Using the SMBus
The SMBus can operate in both Master and Slave modes. The interface provides timing and shifting con-
trol for serial transfers; higher level protocol is determined by user software. The SMBus interface provides
the following application-independent features:
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Byte-wise serial data transfers
Clock signal generation on SCL (Master Mode only) and SDA data synchronization
Timeout/bus error recognition, as defined by the SMB0CF configuration register
START/STOP timing, detection, and generation
Bus arbitration
Interrupt generation
Status information
Optional hardware recognition of slave address and automatic acknowledgement of address/data
SMBus interrupts are generated for each data byte or slave address that is transferred. When hardware
acknowledgement is disabled, the point at which the interrupt is generated depends on whether the hard-
ware is acting as a data transmitter or receiver. When a transmitter (i.e. sending address/data, receiving an
ACK), this interrupt is generated after the ACK cycle so that software may read the received ACK value;
when receiving data (i.e. receiving address/data, sending an ACK), this interrupt is generated before the
ACK cycle so that software may define the outgoing ACK value. If hardware acknowledgement is enabled,
these interrupts are always generated after the ACK cycle. See Section 21.5 for more details on transmis-
sion sequences.
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