DDC vs I²C

The relationship between DDC and I²C is a source of confusion. Making matters worse, the terms are often used interchangably. This section attempts to clarify the relationship.

I²C is a low level, slow speed specification of a 2 wire protocol for sending and receiving bytes. DDC/CI is layered on top of that protocol, describing particular sequences of bytes that are communicated between a master device (the host computer) and a slave device (a monitor) at address x37 on an I²C bus. By analogy, DDC is as a subclass of superclass I²C, that is DDC obeys the rules of I²C, but is more specific. For example, only certain byte sequences are legal. SMBUS is another protocol based on I²C.

For details on I²C, see the References section.

ddcutil reads from and writes to the userspace /dev-i2c devices which present a file system like abstraction of an I²C bus. It leaves the bit-banging to the video device drivers, e.g. amdgpu, nouveau.

Some time ago the Monitor Control Command Set (MCCS) specification took on the role of defining the virtual control panel (VCP) feature codes processed by DDC/CI. The DDC/CI specification references the MCCS spec. Later, a protocol (the VESA UBS Monitor Control Class Specification) was defined for carrying MCCS over USB, without use of DDC/CI. Nonetheless this usage is also referred to casually as "DDC".