Bus repeaters expand use of popular Inter-IC bus
18 June 2003
Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT
Philips Semiconductors has developed a family of bus repeaters that can double the number of devices able to reside on the same serial inter-IC bus (I2C) system (from 20 to 30 devices up to 40 to 60 devices). With the expanded use of the I2C as a maintenance and control bus, such as the SMBus in computing, telecom, and networking systems, these repeater chips let designers build larger I2C systems. The chips also permit the hot-swapping of I2C cards into an active system.
PCA9515 is a single repeater in an eight lead package. It supports up to 800 pF of capacitive loading by splitting the bus into two segments. Both the 9516 and 9518 contain four repeaters, each with individual enable pins. These chips can be used like a hub, enabling the main I2C bus to send signals to four downstream I2C buses.
Available in a 16-lead package, the 9516 is limited to four downstream ports. The 9518 comes in a larger 20-lead package. Its expansion interface allows multiple repeaters to be concatenated, allowing an almost unlimited number of bus segments to be added. The hub device includes bidirectional I2C drivers that isolate the bus capacitance on each segment. The hubs are multimaster-capable, which means that the repeater is transparent to bus arbitration and contention protocols. They have only one repeater delay between segments.
All three devices allow voltage translation, with either 3,3 or 5 V on any of the I2C sub-branches. The repeaters are offered in both SO and TSSOP packages.
For more information contact Avnet Kopp, 011 809 6100, [email protected], www.avnet.co.za
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