I2C Timing & Arbitration: Review Checklist

Review checklist

Review Checklist for I2C Timing & Arbitration focuses on NACK rate, clock-stretch duration, bus recovery time. The goal is to connect the observable symptom to protocol mechanism, ownership, and regression risk.

• Spec revision and implemented feature subset are named.

• Clock/reset and CDC assumptions are reviewed.

• Traffic classes, IDs/tags, ordering, and outstanding limits are documented.

• VIP/compliance coverage maps back to requirements.

• Performance metric and debug artifact are stored with the signoff note.

• Owners signed: peripheral owner, board owner, driver owner.

Sign-off ownership

OWNERSHIP MAP — I2C Timing & Arbitration

evidence type        owner who reads it
-----------------    ---------------------------
waveform/RTL        peripheral owner
spec/VIP            board owner
firmware/system     driver owner

Rule: every metric must have a named owner before a review starts.

Protocol deep dive

I2C/SPI/UART bugs are contract bugs: timing, reset value, IRQ type, and DMA watermark.

Concept diagram

PERIPHERAL CONTRACT

firmware writes regs -> RTL state machine -> pins -> board -> device
        ^                    |
        +------- IRQ/DMA ----+

If IRQ is level but driver assumes edge, you get lost events.

Metric graph

FIFO WATERMARK vs DMA

FIFO fill
 100%|        *** overrun risk
  75%|     ***
  50%|  ***     <- ideal DMA trigger band
  25%| *
   0%+----------------> time

Metrics and artifacts to collect

• NACK rate

• overrun count

• CS setup/hold violations

• IRQ miss rate

Mini case study

SPI flash worked in loopback but failed in system: CS deasserted one cycle early relative to device hold time. Board + RTL + mode bits together formed the contract.

Debug branches

• If overrun, FIFO depth vs ISR latency vs DMA burst.

• If NACK on I2C, pull-ups, speed, and clock stretch.

• If garbage data, CPOL/CPHA and MSB/LSB first.

Senior review question

Ask: what is the first transaction that deviates, and which spec rule does it test?

Key takeaways

• Connect every protocol claim to a transaction identity and measurable metric.

• Store the artifact (waveform, log, counter) next to every signoff decision.

Common pitfalls

• Debugging timeouts without finding the first bad transaction.

• Quoting peak bus width without payload efficiency and retry overhead.

• Treating VIP compliance as a substitute for system integration replay.

Principal review addendum

Re-read I2C Timing & Arbitration against one concrete product workload, not a synthetic directed test.

I2C shares open-drain wires with address arbitration, acknowledge cycles, and optional clock stretching.