What is USB ?
Universal Serial Bus, commonly known as
USB, is a very popular on data transferring applications in the world. USB was
created in the middle of 1990s and now most of computer related equipment are
using this technology for data transmission so currently billions of usb
products are manufactured annually. The main purpose of creating USB is to reduce
the number of interfaces of a typical computer. You might have seen,
normally there are lots of interfaces in a computer such as serial ports, parallel
ports,ps/2 and many more. The usb technology was used to replace these
interfaces by a common interface so that all the type of devices can be connected to a single port. Also to use as a power supply for some
devices(supply power for small devices).
USB Ports & Connectors
There are 2 major types as type A & type B.They are divided in to sub categories under their shape (see the picture below)
Advantages of USB
The reason for the huge popularity is non other than its
lots of advantages. Normally older interfaces were used only fore specific
connector but as mentioned in the earlier chapter same port can be applied
for various kind of connectors, even though this is the most advantageous thing of
usb there are many more
- Hot-swappable
Hot swapping/ hot plugging facility is added to the usb therefore the
usb devices can be connected and disconnected while computer is running. (No need
to reboot when new device is connected)
- As a power supply (power is supplied from the bus)
When small devices are plugged in
to the computer using USB bus then the device does not need to get external
power from any outside source. Power for the device is supplied through the universal
serial bus from the pc(5V). devices such as internet/Bluetooth dongles, cooling
fans can be connected to the pc. Large devices such as printers, scanners need
to be connected to an external power source.
- Plug and play
Operating system automatically
detects the connected device and no need to install additional software to make
the device identified to the operating system.
- Low cost for implementation
The complexity of the data
transmission is handles by the pc. Devices can be connected to the pc using low
cost cables (few wires within the cable) and other instruments.
USB versions
There were few
versions such as :
usb 0.7
usb 0.8
usb 0.9 and more ….
But most popular
versions are 2.0 and 3.0
- USB 2.0: Released in April 2000. Added higher maximum signaling rate of 480 Mbit/s
- USB 3.0 was released in November 2008. The standard defines a new "SuperSpeed" mode with a signaling speed of 5 Gbit/s and a usable data rate of up to 4 Gbit/s
2.0 - white and 3.0 - blue
Applications of USB
There are lots of applications of usb. Here are few
applications of usb.
keyboards and pointing devices
Mass storages
External hard disks
Printers
Scanners
Dongles
Modems
Some external sound cards, tv cards are nowadays connected
to usb port.
Like this many devices are using usb technology for data transferring.
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