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USB - Intel Strikes Back!
 USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and it’s engineered and marketed by none other than the largest chip manufacturer of computer chips in the world, Intel. This juggernaut would love to see USB propagate and become the high-speed connector of the future thereby giving Firewire a run for its money. However, some large hurdles will have to be overcome to pull it off and of which is unlikely.
Let’s have a look at the good points of USB. Why is USB so important? USB currently is the multi-platform standard for connecting low bandwidth devices such as keyboards, mice, printers, speakers, and game controllers, to our beloved computers. It makes these devices easy to plug in and switch on the fly without the hassles of tangled wires and the sort of mess we dread with older technology. Currently USB runs at 1.5 to 12 Mbps (megabits per second) -- fast enough for any small peripheral device to communicate. USB is hot-pluggable (meaning that it's easy to plug in and unplug devices without turning off and on your computer) and can carry its own power if needed. Additionally, you can plug in up to 127 simultaneously connected devices on a chain via a USB hub. Now, that’s a lot of stuff! With such flexibility and ease of use, USB has made our beloved PC’s a much friendlier piece of hardware.
Two sides to every coin:
Now for the drawbacks of USB: On the flip side of ease of use and connecting a bazillion devices, USB has to go through a CPU (Central Processing Unit) on the computer to allow peripherals to communicate with each other. Unlike Firewire, which uses peer-to-peer flexibility, USB is useless without the computer to direct a signal. Another disadvantage is that driver support has yet to ease headaches for users. In the future, let’s hope developers can ease our pain in the future. As for speed, well, USB in its current form is a turtle compared to Firewire and doesn’t give video professionals any high-speed connectivity for editing tasks.
What does the future hold for USB? Presently, USB 2.0 (Intel’s answer to Firewire) is being finalized as we speak but is not yet completed or ready for prime time. It may take another 6 months or more just to begin the long and difficult task of getting the technology integrated into hardware manufacturers products in quantity. Intel’s target is to make USB 2.0 transfer data up to 480 Mbps; thereby surpassing Firewire at its present speed and the leader in the high-speed connection arena. However, as stated in the Firewire article, by the time USB 2.0 ever comes to market, Firewire should be running at double the speed of USB 2.0. So why is Intel trying to push the technology to levels that it clearly had no intention of doing when it first laid out the specification? It’s simple – Intel makes all the controllers that power the technology thus ensuring that it has a profitable revenue stream and a standard that is tied to its technology even if it is not the most robust out of the two.
Time will tell what happens to USB 2.0 and how far it will go. With nothing even closely planned after 2.0 it seems that Intel should take USB to 2.0 and then let Firewire reign supreme. Nonetheless, we should all look forward to 2.0 to enable peripheral device connections to speed up.
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