5.3 Acknowledge and No-Acknowledge

After every byte of data is received, the receiving device must confirm to the transmitting device that it has successfully received the data byte by responding with what is known as an Acknowledge (ACK). An ACK is accomplished by the transmitting device first releasing the SDA line at the falling edge of the eighth clock cycle followed by the receiving device responding with a logic ‘0’ during the entire high period of the ninth clock cycle.

When the AT24C32E is transmitting data to the host, the host can indicate that it is done receiving data and wants to end the operation by sending a logic  ‘1’ response to the AT24C32E instead of an ACK response during the ninth clock cycle. This is known as a No-Acknowledge (NACK) and is accomplished by the host sending a logic ‘1’ during the ninth clock cycle, at which point the AT24C32E will release the SDA line so the host can then generate a Stop condition.

The transmitting device, which can be the bus host or the Serial EEPROM, must release the SDA line at the falling edge of the eighth clock cycle to allow the receiving device to drive the SDA line to a logic ‘0’ to ACK the previous 8-bit word. The receiving device must release the SDA line at the end of the ninth clock cycle to allow the transmitter to continue sending new data. A timing diagram has been provided in Figure 5-1 to better illustrate these requirements.