Battery protection integrated circuit and battery management system

A battery protection integrated circuit (IC) which is used to construct a system configured to perform serial communication among a plurality of battery protection integrated circuits which operate at different reference potentials and which are connected in series via a reference potential converter, the battery protection integrated circuit comprising:

• a higher-level transmission terminal connected to a reception terminal of a higher-level circuit that is adjacent in cascade connection and is configured to transmit information to the higher-level circuit;
• a lower-level reception terminal connected to a transmission terminal of a first lower-level circuit that is adjacent in the cascade connection and is configured to receive information from the first lower-level circuit;
• an acquisition device configured to acquire transmission information to transmit to the higher-level circuit;
• and
• at least one of a memory or a register configured to store at least one of transmitted information which is transmitted from the first lower-level circuit and the transmission information which is acquired by the acquisition device,
• the battery protection IC being configured to transmit, in response to reception of instructive information indicating an instruction to read one of the transmission information and the transmitted information, the one of the transmitted information and the transmission information via the higher-level transmission terminal to the higher-level circuit, and simultaneously receive, by the lower-level reception terminal, one of transmission information of the first lower-level circuit and transmitted information stored in the first lower-level circuit transmitted from a second lower-level circuit that is lower than the first lower-level circuit.