Yes, you can bitbang your way out of that, but its not great for all applications (like when you want to do DMA to/from the I2C in the background while the proc

Yes, you can bitbang your way out of that, but its not great for all applications (like when you want to do DMA to/from the I2C in the background while the processor sleeps or does something else; can't do that with GPIO bitbang). I was really surprised by that when I first encountered it; I2C is something rudimentary.