USB Explained - Steven Mcdowell

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Résumé :
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a low-to-high-speed technology that provides a shared-access, highly available, robust, self-configuring, extensible, and easy-to-use serial bus that is host-computer independent and consistent across computer architectures. The advent of multimedia and the proliferation of relatively inexpensive processing power has left the venerable RS-232 a relic of times past. The USB was invented and standardized by a group of computer manufacturers and peripheral vendors in early 1995 under the auspices of an organization called the Universal Serial Bus Implementers Forum. It's goal was to define a high-speed serial bus technology to replace, or phase out, the existing RS-232 serial port technology. Today's serial bus technology must cover a full range of technology that can deliver everything from digital joysticks for high-precision game playing, to digital audio peripherals to high-resolution live video inupt and output devices to data networks and telephony equipment. The USB can do all of this at speeds faster than the RS-232 serial port was designed to handle. The biggest difference between a single-ended serial port (like RS-232) and a serial bus like the USB is that the traditional serial port is a point-to-point connection between a computer and a device, whereas on a serial bus many devices can communicate and share the connection to the computer. In the USB, up to 128 bus devices can simultaneously communicate with the host computer.

Biographie:
Steven McDowell is a Senior Engineer at NCR Corporation in West Columbia, SC, specializing in high-availability Windows NT Solutions. He has worked extensively in operating system and device driver development. Martin Seyer is Vice President and General Manager at NCR Corporation, and author of the Prentice Hall PTR best-seller RS-232 Made Easy. A 20-year veteran of the computer industry, he has contributed to several serial communications patents.