Philips Offers New PCA9541 I2C Master Selector

Royal Philips Electronics (the Netherlands) announced a new two-to-one I2C master selector, which is optimized for selecting one of two I2C master devices that connect to a shared resource in products ranging from MP3 players to servers in computing, communications and networking applications. The PCA9541 allows two separate I2C masters to have access to the same slave device without having to communicate with each other, simplifying design complexity and cost by using a single device to replace the multiple chips previously used.

The PCA9541 also allows two non-multiple capable masters to share a common resource such as a card maintenance history EEPROM, or can be used as a gatekeeper multiplexer. The PCA9541 features a hardware pin-reset function that returns the master selector to the default state, enabling continued communication with upstream slave devices without having to cycle power through critical equipment. Additionally, the PCA9541 includes the ability to function as a voltage level translator between 1.8V, 2.5V, 3.3V and 5V on different buses.

Three versions of the PCA9541 are offered. The PCA9541 is priced at $1.25 per unit for quantities of 10,000, and is available in the HVQFN package and the 20-pin SO and TSSOP packages.