24 Engrossing Facts About USB

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a technology that connects computers to peripheral devices. The USB standard was developed by a number of American companies, including IBM, Intel Corporation, and Microsoft Corporation. The work started in 1994 and then was first introduced in 1996 as a simpler way of connecting hardware to personal computers (PCs). This port has made life easy for everyone who is in touch with computers. So here are some interesting facts about USBs.

1. Ajay V. Bhatt is a computer architect of Indian origin who defined and developed several widely used technologies. USB (Universal Serial Bus) is his contribution; he also helped in developing AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), PCI Express, Platform Power Management architecture, and various chipset improvements.
2. USB was created to standardize the connection of peripherals to personal computers, both for communication and power supply. It has largely replaced interfaces such as serial and parallel ports and is now found on a wide variety of devices.
3. The USB flash drive was invented by Pua Khein-Seng. In Malaysia, he is even known as the “Father of the Pendrive.”
4. USB 1. x was the original standard and is considered obsolete by modern standards. This standard is very unlikely to be found in devices today. Many modern USB standards were introduced with USB 2.0, including support for Mini and Micro cables, USB OTG (see below), and others.
5. The first United States patent for a USB flash drive was filed in April 1999 by Israeli firm M-Systems (acquired by SanDisk in 2006), which collaborated with IBM to launch the 8MB ‘DiskOnKey’ in North America.
6. The “ThumbDrive,” produced by Singapore company Trek Technology in 2000, was the first commercially available USB flash drive. Later that year, IBM released its own model, the DiskOnKey.
7. There are three types of USB cables based on the physical design of the connectors and ports: USB Type A, USB Type B, and USB Type C. There are two versions of USB based on the functionality of the USB connectors: USB 2.0 and USB 3.0.
8. In April 2000, USB 2.0 was released, adding a higher maximum signaling rate of 480 Mbit/s (maximum theoretical data throughput 53 MByte/s) called High Speed or High Bandwidth to the USB 1.x Full Speed signaling rate of 12 Mbit/s (maximum theoretical data throughput 1.2 MByte/s).
9. In a USB-powered system, the maximum allowed output current from a USB rail is limited. In USB 2.0, a unit load is defined as 100 mA. In USB 2.0, a device can draw a maximum of five unit loads (500 mA) from a port.
10. The third major version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for interfacing computers and electronic devices, USB 3.0, was released in November 2008.
11. USB 3.0 theoretical transfer speed is 4.8 Gbit/s (600MBps) vs. 480 Mbit/s (60MBps), a 10X improvement. Sustained transfer speeds for external hard drives are approximately 85MBps for USB 3.0 and approximately 22MBps for USB 2.0, representing a 5X improvement but still a significant advancement in transfer speed.
12. A USB 3.0 port can deliver up to 900mA or 0.9A, which equates to 4.5 watts. These power output specifications are based on a 5-volt rating from each standard output. The USB 3.0 dedicated charging and charging downstream ports, on the other hand, provide up to 1,500 mA or 1.5A, which translates to 7.5 watts.
13. On 29 August 2019, USB 4.0 Was launched. But it has still not become a common port in even the new computers or laptops.
14. USB4 products must have a throughput of 20 Gbit/s and can support to have a throughput of 40 Gbit/s.
15. Kingston DataTraveler Max 1TB and DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 are currently the world’s largest-capacity USB 3.0 Flash drives.
16. A 1 TB USB drive should be able to hold approximately 310,000 photos taken with a 12MP camera. 500 hours of high-definition video, or 1000 hours/40 days of video, or 250 movies, or even more. 17,000 hours of music or whatever your creative mind can conjure up.
17. USB is a very useful connector that makes our lives very easy. These days we can find a number of USB devices that solves different problems. Some of the USB Devices that are weird yet useful are
    (i) Mini USB Washing Machine
    (ii) USB Aroma Leaf (air fragrance machine)
    (iii) ThinkGeek USB Pet Rock
    (iv) USB thermoelectric cooler and warmer
    (v) USB coffee warmer
18. The number of write or erase cycles on a USB Flash Drive can be used to calculate its life expectancy. Depending on the memory technology used, USB flash drives can withstand between 10,000 and 100,000 write/erase cycles.
19. Right now, the biggest portable hard disk drive is the WD Elements Portable, which has a capacity of 5TB.
20. According to one estimate, there are around six billion USB devices in the world.
21. The USB connector can withstand 1,500 insert-removal cycles before it starts degrading.
22. The new Kingston DataTraveler Max has record-breaking read and writes speeds of up to 1,000MB/s, making it one of the fastest USB drives on the market and the first of its kind. The DataTraveler Max is intended to be portable, useful, and powerful.
23. The most well-known and widely used connector type is the USB A connector.
24. According to a report, the USB Device Market will be worth $65,857.2 million by the year 2028.