Diodes Incorporated offers the PI6ULS5V9511A I2C / SMBus buffer, which allows hot-swappable line cards in an "always-on" network and is available in a variety of packages.
Rack-based systems allow the use of standard networks such as PCI / cPCI, VME and AdvancedTCA, web servers and telecommunications applications. These critical systems must provide up to 99.999% availability, which makes extended maintenance and unplanned downtime unacceptable. To keep the system up and running, hot swapping is usually used to add and remove line cards without turning off the power. However, today's sensitive high-speed serial communication buses are not designed to facilitate hot-plugging.
To meet this need, the device provides the protection needed for hot-swappable cards using serial buses such as I2C and SMBus. It provides an effective two-way buffer between the card's SDA and SCL signals and the system's real-time bus. The integrated control circuit can identify bus activity, so that the device can maintain electrical isolation between the real-time system and the line card until a stop command is recognized or the bus is idle, at which point it switches signals without causing bus contention Or data is interrupted. This eliminates the possibility of bus damage during card insertion and removal.
