Jobs you may not know that exist: ice cream taste tester, professional bridesmaid, snake milker…and USB warrior?
The latter is more of a working title to describe what members of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the nonprofit organization responsible for improving USB technology, do. If you have a pile of tangled USB cords in the corner of your office, chances are you have encountered the 30-year-old organization, whose members include Intel, HP, and Apple, in one shape or form.
Jeff Ravencraft, USB-IF president and COO, told IT Brew that he has practically dedicated most of his life to advancing these connectors.
“USB is the most successful [input/output] interface in the history of personal computing, and it has migrated now into all types of consumer electronics product segments,” Ravencraft said. “Airplanes, automobiles, cell phones, desk lamps, displays, electronic toothbrushes, medical electronics, power tools, wall sockets. It’s literally everywhere.”
IT Brew caught up with Ravencraft and USB-IF Chairman and CTO Abdul R. Ismail to break down the certification process and what’s ahead for USB connections.
Responses below have been edited for length and clarity.
What does the USB-IF certification process look like? Is it just you sitting in a room, plugging in connectors all day, making sure they adhere to your guidelines?
Ravencraft: We test for 10,000 insertions, but that’s not a person sitting at a desk plugging a connector into a receptacle 10,000 times. Some of it’s done with automation. Some of it’s done through math and parameters of insertions. We also certify silicon that goes in the devices and the host. We certify cables. We cut the cable open, look at the material. We do poisonous gas testing. It’s quite in depth.
Ismail: For the poisonous gas test, what we’re actually talking about is aging. We’re aging the cable, five years, 10 years. Those tests are not just to check the poisonous gas effect, but to cause aging of the cable to make sure that it can still work after five years, after 10 years, for example. And for the 10,000 extractions, there’s extraction force and insertion force. We have all these things to make sure it behaves the same way.
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How far away are we from ditching port connectors altogether and just going all in on wireless connections?
Ravencraft: Today, there’s not really wireless charging. There’s no such thing. It’s a pad that you lay your phone on, and coming out of that pad is a USB Type-C connector…The issue with true wireless charging is they have not figured out how to actually send wireless signals through the air without killing someone. What if you have a pacemaker? What if you have some other device? How high is the charge going to be? There’s no such thing as wireless charging. I’m not saying they won’t solve it, but they’ve got to solve how to send power waves over the air without killing someone.
Any tips for IT professionals and organizations when shopping around for connectors?
Ravencraft: Today, every manufacturer wants to be the lowest cost provider. Now, I’m not saying that’s good. Just because it’s low cost doesn’t mean it’s a good product, but that’s the nature of the beast today…I would caution them to not focus strictly on cost to the company or for their organization.
Ismail: Always look for certified components. If a consumer buys a certified connector with the USB-IF logo on it, you will be assured that you will get quality products, something that will work every time.