Resolving I²C bus address conflicts?

Linear Technology has announced the LTC4316, LTC4317 and LTC4318 address translators, said to enable the hardwired address of one or more I²C or SMBus slave devices to be translated to a different address. This allows slaves with the same hardwired address to coexist on the same bus. Discrete resistors allow the new address to be selected without software programming and 127 address translations are available.

The translators provide voltage level translation for 2.5V, 3.3V and 5V busses, ±4kV human body model ESD, 1V precharging and glitch filtering of the bus pins which, Linear claims, make the address translators suitable for live board insertion and removal applications. A pass-through mode can disable the address translation and allow general call addressing by the master. The translators are designed to recover automatically from abnormal bus conditions like bus stuck low or premature stop.

The LTC4316 single input, single output model is available in 10-lead 3 x 3mm DFN and 10-lead MSOP packages. The LTC4317 'Y' configuration variant – one input, two outputs – is available in a 16-lead 5 x 3mm DFN, while the LTC4318 dual input, dual output device is available in a 20-lead 4 x 4mm QFN.

http://www.linear.com