Overcoming SMBus limitations with I3C
With the growing trend for PCIe and CXL solutions, there is a need to improve the sideband management path as currently defined using SMBus. The newest SNIA SFF-TA-1009 specification for EDSFF PCIe devices released in January 2023 defined a method to allow I3C upgrade of the management SMBus/I2C bus. Other standards organizations, such as OCP and PCI SIG, are looking into adopting the same design.