Advantages or purpose of using general call addres in I2C

[amitk3553]

Please tell me the purpose or advantages of using GENERAL CALL ADDRESS in I2C.

Its just for resetting slaves and making them programmable configurable by hardware? or something else

and what does mean by programmable configurable by hardware?
Please ELABORATE !!

 

[willis...]

Please tell me the purpose or advantages of using GENERAL CALL ADDRESS in I2C.

Its just for resetting slaves and making them programmable configurable by hardware? or something else

and what does mean by programmable configurable by hardware?
Please ELABORATE !!

A general call address is used when you would like to send information to ALL devices on a bus. While you could use it to reset all the device, it useful for much more than that. Any command that you want to send to multiple devices can be sent using the general call address. If a certain device does not need data from the general call, then it simply does not need to respond.

Regards,
Willis