案例库 · 软件与 IT · 技术决策 · 1994–2001
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
USB won with one self-describing connector that Intel gave away royalty-free.
USB made devices describe themselves to one host instead of needing a port and driver each, and Intel opened the patents so every maker could adopt it for free.
Intel
那一手
By the early 1990s a PC needed a keyboard port, an RS-232 serial port, a parallel port, a game port and often a proprietary mouse card, and adding a peripheral meant wrestling with IRQs and installing a driver. Vendors dodged the limits with their own add-in cards, which added cost and broke compatibility.
Intel's Ajay Bhatt pushed a different idea: one connector for everything. In 1994 Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Compaq, DEC, NEC and Northern Telecom started the joint project, and the USB 1.0 specification was published in January 1996.
USB is a serial bus with a rugged, cheap four-pin connector and a plug-and-play model: a device tells the host what it is, the host loads the right driver, and hot-swapping means no reboots. It could serve up to 127 devices through hubs at twelve megabits a second.
Because Intel owned the patents and decided to license them royalty-free, the standard cost makers nothing to adopt, and when Apple shipped the iMac in 1998 with no legacy ports and Microsoft built USB into Windows, peripheral manufacturers had no choice but to follow.
为什么管用
- One host controller and one driver can handle every self-describing device, so makers no longer designed a port and driver per gadget.
- Royalty-free patents let any vendor adopt USB without paying Intel, so no one stood to lose by switching.
- Plug-and-play and hot-swap removed the technical fear that had kept users on their familiar old ports.
- Apple's all-USB iMac and Microsoft's Windows support created the installed base that forced the peripheral industry to follow.
可以搬走什么
If a product is choked by a stack of one-off interfaces, collapse them into one self-identifying port and make it free to adopt, and the ecosystem does the scaling for you.
后来呢
USB became the universal way to attach almost anything, and the USB Implementers Forum kept it extending from 1.0 through USB4. The one-connector, host-driven design is why the same port now carries data, power and video.
资料来源
- The guy who invented USB didn't make a dime off of it — but here's why he's OK with that
- 25 Years of Making Connections With USB (After Three Attempts)
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