Remember when the USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard first came out? It was pretty sweet wasn't it. The first thing I remember it coming out for, at least the first thing I used it for, was the mouse, ball mouse to be specific. Introduced first in 1996 from collaboration between Intel, Compaq, Microsoft, Digital, IBM, NEC, and Northern Telecom. The device is used with a variety of devices including: Ethernet adapters, modems, serial port adapters, keyboards, mice, joysticks, digital cameras, printers, USB flash drives, memory card readers, media players, external drives, hubs, webcams, Wi-Fi adapters, and bluetooth adapters. The list is quite long and doesn't even cover all uses.
The architecture of USB has an asymmetric design. Which enables you to connect a root of devices (up to 127) from one port. The device will host a other devices and operate in a round robin fashion to orchestrate data between devices.
First there was Low Speed USB 1.0 which rate was 1.5 Mbit/s. It is intended primarily to save cost in low-bandwidth devices such as keyboards, mice, and joysticks. Also to smooth out the multitude of device specific ports previously used on the rear of computer towers.
Second came USB 1.1 nicknamed Full Speed. At a data rate of 12 Mbits/s. Which basically is faster and becomes the standard for hub speed.
Then comes High Speed USB 2.0. Which has a data rate of 480 Mbit/s or 60 MB/s, which is a great leap of improvement for speed. Devices using this standard are backwards compatible to previous standards if connecting a 2.0 device to a 1.1 computer. Original specifications were released April 27, 2000. Many changes and alterations were modified or added in the USB 2.0 over the next several years. These changes consisted of a variety including: mini-B, USB on-the-go, microUSB, power link, and microB.
USB is very common and versatile and the durability is hard to beat. The hardest trouble an inexperienced USB user would run into is which direction it plugs in. Although one hard push the wrong way and it soon becomes apparent that you may want to turn it around.
As of November 17, 2008 specifications for USB 3.0 have been released. The standard, nicknamed SuperSpeed boasts power and performance improvements while maintaining backward compatibility. With controllers expected in mid summer the USB product rollout is anticipated for 2010. The first devices to incorporate the standard will most likely be external hard drives, media players, flash drives, and cameras.
Data rate of SuperSpeed prides a 5.0 Gb/s with simultaneous bi-direction data flow(dual-bus). Features a six wire design, using four wires for dual-simplex SuperSpeed data path and the other two wires for half-duplex differential signaling used by previous USB standards. Another feature is packets are sent asynchronously to only devices meant for the packet. Compared to previous standards, in which packets were directed to all devices.
In summary, USB 3.0 products are basically already the shit, even if they're not even out yet.
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