Will USB become the system bus of the future?

2000-04-28

It is a surprise that nobody thought of it before. A flash memory device in the form of a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector – plug it into the hub and it becomes near-instantly accessible as a drive on a Windows 98 system. This is exactly what a Japanese company - Shin-Nichi Electronics (SNE) – has done with the launch of the Thumb Drive. Though touted as a competitor to Sony’s memory stick rather than the beginning of a more general trend, it doesn’t take much of a leap of faith to see the potential for such a form factor.

In fact, somebody did recognise the potential of the USB port as more than a cable connection. Over a year ago Aladdin Systems were giving out free samples of its eToken, a USB-based security dongle. This device, which can be carried on a keyring, can be used as a smartkey holding authentication and encryption information about a specific user. At the time that the eToken was launched, Aladdin was worried about the potential uptake due to the relative newness of USB. Today, there isn’t a motherboard or a laptop which does not have at least one USB port.

There are several advantages to these tiny USB devices – they are extremely light, portable and robust, and due to their plug-and-play nature they can be used by the least computer literate. Not to mention the fact that USB is rapidly becoming the interface technology of choice for PCs and peripheral devices such as PDAs and digital cameras. Now, with the advent of flash memory supporting half-decent data volumes, the USB-based form is becoming appropriate for peripheral storage. This move towards USB could have significant impacts on other interface standards, both outside and inside the box.

Efforts to build the internal bus of the future are lumbering forward, driven by the Infiniband consortium which was formed by the merger of two industry associations, Future I/O and System I/O. Infiniband offers gigabit transmission speeds managed by a switching fabric, all well and good. USB 2.0 products will only be able to support 450Mbps when they become available in the latter part of this year. While Infiniband may be compelling for PC based servers, it is highly probably that USB will become the interconnect standard of choice for client and consumer devices. There is a drive towards integrated client PCs such as those from Hewlett Packard and Compaq (based, it should be said, on the iMac architecture) which consist of sealed PC boxes which can be extended using USB-based peripherals. Wyse has taken this one stage further with its Thinovation initiative. All of these devices have a common factor – they all rely on the expansion capabilities provided by USB.

USB is more than a connection standard, it is becoming a means by which cheap, extensible computing appliances can be constructed and exploited. Devices such as the Thumb Drive and the eToken, coupled with USB-based modems, cameras, wireless networking and other peripherals are the shape of things to come, driving down the cost of computing whilst increasing its flexibility both in the workplace and in the home. To bring things full circle, Sony’s PlayStation 2 may support Memory Stick but it also includes two USB ports. It is difficult to believe that, of the two interface types, Sony’s proprietary solution will take over from a standard that is rapidly gaining global acceptance.

(First published 28 April 2000)