USB

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical interfaces, and communication protocols to and from hosts, such as personal computers, to and from peripheral devices, e.g. displays, keyboards, and mass storage devices, and to and from intermediate hubs, which multiply the number of a host's ports. Introduced in 1996, USB was originally designed to standardize the connection of peripherals to computers, replacing various interfaces such as serial ports, parallel ports, game ports, and Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) ports. Early versions of USB became commonplace on a wide range of devices, such as keyboards, mice, cameras, printers, scanners, flash drives, smartphones, game consoles. USB has since evolved into a standard to replace virtually all common ports on computers, mobile devices, peripherals, power supplies, and various other small electronics. In the latest standard, the USB-C connector replaces many types of connectors for power (up to 240 W), displays (e.g. DisplayPort, HDMI), and many other uses, as well as all previous USB connectors. As of 2024, USB consists of four generations of specifications: USB 1.x, USB 2.0, USB 3.x, and USB4. The USB4 specification enhances the data transfer and power delivery functionality with "a connection-oriented tunneling architecture designed to combine multiple protocols onto a single physical interface so that the total speed and performance of the USB4 Fabric can be dynamically shared." In particular, USB4 supports the tunneling of the Thunderbolt 3 protocols, namely PCI Express (PCIe, load/store interface) and DisplayPort (display interface). USB4 also adds host-to-host interfaces. Each specification sub-version supports different signaling rates from 1.5 and 12 Mbit/s half-duplex in USB 1.0/1.1 to 80 Gbit/s full-duplex in USB4 2.0. USB also provides power to peripheral...