[PATCH 0/2] i2c: i801: Detect SPD Write Disable and expose as adapter quirk

From: Tinsae Tadesse

Date: Thu Feb 05 2026 - 05:30:22 EST


Hi I2C and HWMON maintainers,

Intel i801 SMBus controllers feature a "SPD Write Disable" bit
in the SMBHSTCFG register. When set by firmware, the hardware
silently blocks all write transactions to the SPD EEPROM
address range (0x50-0x57) while allowing reads to succeed.

This creates a significant issue for the spd5118 hwmon driver.
The SPD5118 requires write access for switching between
register pages to read temperature data, and for cache
synchronization during suspend/resume. When SPD Write Disable
is set and the spd5118 driver attempts write transactions, the
bus will generate a storm of SMBus DEV_ERR messages.

This patch series proposes a generic solution by:
1. Introducing a new adapter quirk flag in include/linux/i2c.h
to communicate this hardware restriction.
2. Modifying drivers/i2c/i2c-i801.c to detect the SPD Write
Disable bit and set the quirk flag.
3. Modifying drivers/hwmon/spd5118.c to check for this quirk
during probe and fail cleanly, as write access is mandatory.

By using this mechanism, we avoid embedding device-specific
policies in the controller driver and provide client drivers
with the necessary information to make an informed decision.

Tinsae Tadesse (2):
i2c: i801: Detect SPD Write Disable and expose as adapter quirk
hwmon: spd5118: Fail probe if SPD writes are disabled

drivers/hwmon/spd5118.c | 15 +++++++++++++++
drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-i801.c | 16 +++++++++++++++-
include/linux/i2c.h | 3 +++
3 files changed, 33 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

--
2.52.0