The I²C peripheral in MCT8315A implements clock stretching under certain conditions when there are pending I²C interrupts waiting to be processed. During clock stretching, MCT8315A pulls SCL low and the I²C bus is unavailable for use by other devices. The following is a list of conditions under which clock stretching can occur:

1. Start interrupt pending: There are two scenarios when a start interrupt can result in clock stretching,
   1. When target ID is a match, I²C peripheral in MCT8315A raises a start interrupt request. Until this start interrupt request is processed, clock is stretched. Upon processing this request, clock is released and an ACK (marked in yellow or grey in Figure 7-54 and Figure 7-55) is sent to the controller for continuing with the transaction.
   2. If Start (followed by target ID match) for a new transaction is received when a receive interrupt from previous transaction is yet to be processed, clock is stretched until both the receive interrupt and start interrupt are processed in chronological order. This process ensures that previous transaction is executed correctly before initiating the next transaction.
2. Receive interrupt pending: When a receive interrupt is waiting to be processed and the receive register is full which occurs when two successive bytes (data or control) have been received by MCT8315A (separated by one ACK shown as blue boxes in Figure 7-54 and Figure 7-55) without the receive interrupt generated by the first byte being processed. Upon receive of second byte, clock is stretched until receive interrupt generated by the first byte is processed.
3. Transmit buffer is empty: In case of a transmit interrupt pending (to send data back to controller), if the transmit buffer is waiting to be populated with data to be read back to the controller, clock stretching is done until the transmit buffer is populated with requested data. After the buffer is populated, clock is released and data is sent to controller.