Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and communications protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices.
USB was designed to standardize the connection of computer peripherals, such as keyboards, pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters to personal computers, both to communicate and to supply electric power. It has become commonplace on other devices, such as smartphones, PDAs and video game consoles. USB has effectively replaced a variety of earlier interfaces, such as serial and parallel ports, as well as separate power chargers for portable devices.
As of 2008, approximately 6 billion USB ports and interfaces were in the global marketplace, and about 2 billion were being sold each year.
Read more about Universal Serial Bus: History, System Design, Device Classes, Physical Appearance, Cabling, Power, Signaling, Transmission Rates, Latency, Communication, Interoperability, Related Standards
Famous quotes containing the words universal, serial and/or bus:
“People get real comfortable with their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair. Hair trauma. It’s the universal thing.”
—Jamie Lee Curtis (b. 1958)
“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)