The ubiquitous, universal Universal Serial Bus

When Jim Pappas first spoke to me about USB, which was almost based on Philips I2C, his ambitions for it was a universal peripheral interconnect. That was 23 years ago. Last week, when he introduced CXL, he told me it (CXL) could evolve as USB did. “I never could have imagined it would expand and be used for everything as it is today,” he said of USB. “So why shouldn’t we expect the same for CXL,” he added. (See CXL story this issue). Today USB connects everything including monitors, smartphones and power supplies, and does up to 40 Gb/s —