NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     smbus -- System Management Bus

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     device smbus

     device iicsmb
     device bktr

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The smbus system provides a uniform, modular and architecture-independent
     system for the implementation of drivers to control various SMB devices
     and to utilize different SMB controllers (I2C, PIIX4, Brooktree848,
     vm86...).

System Management Bus    [Toc]    [Back]

     The System Management Bus is a two-wire interface through which simple
     power-related chips can communicate with rest of the system.  It uses I2C
     as its backbone (see iicbus(4)).

     A system using SMB passes messages to and from devices instead of tripping
 individual control lines.

     With the SMBus, a device can provide manufacturer information, tell the
     system what its model/part number is, save its state for a suspend event,
     report different types of errors, accept control parameters, and return
     its status.

     The SMBus may share the same host device and physical bus as ACCESS bus
     components provided that an appropriate electrical bridge is provided
     between the internal SMB devices and external ACCESS bus devices.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

     bktr(4), iicbus(4), iicsmb(4), smb(4)

HISTORY    [Toc]    [Back]

     The smbus manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS    [Toc]    [Back]

     This manual page was written by Nicolas Souchu.


FreeBSD 5.2.1			August 10, 1998 		 FreeBSD 5.2.1