SMBUS(4)

💖 smbus(4) — System Management Bus 💖

okay so welcome to the smbus(4) page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, bestie. This one is all about the System Management Bus and it is lowkey iconic.

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✨ NAME ✨

smbus — System Management Bus. That's the whole name, periodt. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

device smbus

device iicsmb

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

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, vm86...). Slay. ✨

🎀 System Management Bus 🎀

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. No cap, that's the vibe. 💫

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
• 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. That's the important caveat, bestie — don't skip it! 🌈

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• iicbus(4)
• iicsmb(4)
• smb(4)
• The SMBus specification, http://www.smbus.org/specs/.

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🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

The smbus manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0. OG status. 👑

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

This manual page was written by Nicolas Souchu. We stan. 🫶

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mwah 💋 — cute footer sign-off: source/version is Debian, date is March 7, 2021, and the page is SMBUS(4). Byeeee! 🫶