Patent controversy [edit]

USB flash drives were invented by Amir Ban, Dov Moran and Oron Ogdan, all of the Israeli
company M-Systems, who filed US patent 6148354 in April 1999. However, the patent describes a
product that has a cable between the memory unit and the USB connector.[8] Released later the
same year, IBM Patent Disclosure RPS8-1999-0201 from September 13, 1999 by Shimon Shmueli
accurately describes the USB flash drive.[9] IBM partnered with M-Systems to bring the product to
market. Shmueli was later an expert witness for M-Systems and as part of his testimony in the
Singapore court presented the IBM disclosure and evidence to the fact that he invented the USB
flash drive.[citation needed] M-Systems' product, developed by a team led by Dan Harkabi and named
the DiskOnKey, was announced in September 2000.[10]
Competing claims have been made by Singaporean company Trek
Technology and Chinese company Netac Technology,[11] but these claims are based on patents that
post-date M-Systems'. Both Trek Technology and Netac Technology have tried to protect their patent
claims. Trek won a Singaporean suit,[12] but a court in the United Kingdom revoked one of Trek's UK
patents.[13] While Netac Technology has brought lawsuits against PNY Technologies,[14] Lenovo,
[15]

aigo,[16]Sony,[17][18][19] and Taiwan's Acer and Tai Guen Enterprise Co,[19] most companies that

manufacture USB flash drives do so without regard for Trek and Netac's patents.
Pua Khein-Seng from Malaysia claims to have incorporated the world's first single chip USB flash
controller. He is currently the CEO of Phison Electronics Corp, which is based in Taiwan.[20]

First commercial product[edit]

An original IBM DiskOnKey USB flash drive, providing 8 MB of storage

Trek Technology and IBM began selling the first USB flash drives commercially in 2000. Trek
Technology sold a model under the brand name "Thumb Drive", and IBM marketed the first such
drives in North America with its product named the "DiskOnKey", which was developed
and manufactured by M-Systems.[21] IBM's USB flash drive became available on December 15, 2000,
[22]

and had a storage capacity of 8 MB, more than five times the capacity of the then-common floppy

disks.

In 2000, Lexar introduced a Compact Flash (CF) card with a USB connection, and a companion card
read/writer and USB cable that eliminated the need for a USB hub.[citation needed]

Second generation[edit]
By 2003, most USB flash drives had USB 2.0 connectivity, which has 480 Mbit/s as the transfer rate
upper bound; after accounting for the protocol overhead that translates to a 35 MB/s effective
throughput.[23] That is considerably slower than what a hard disk drive or solid-state drive can achieve
when connected via the SATA interface.[24]
Transfer rates may be given in megabytes per second (MB/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or in
optical drive multipliers such as "180X" (180 times 150 KiB/s).[25]File transfer rates vary considerably
among devices; typical fast drives from this generation claim to read at up to 30 MB/s and write at
about half that rate, which is about 20 times faster than the theoretical transfer rate achievable by
USB 1.1, which is limited to 12 Mbit/s (1 MB/s with accounted overhead).[26] The effective transfer
rate of a device is significantly affected by the data access pattern; [27] for example, small writes to
random locations are much slower (and cause more wear) than long sequential reads.

Third generation[edit]
Like USB 2.0 before it, USB 3.0 dramatically improved data transfer rates compared to its
predecessor. It was announced in late 2008, but consumer devices were not available until the
beginning of 2010. The USB 3.0 interface specifies transfer rates up to 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s),
compared to USB 2.0's 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s).[28]
All USB 3.0 devices are backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports.[28] As of April 2014, computers with
USB 3.0 ports are common; most newer laptops and desktops have at least one such port. USB 3.0
port expansion cards are available to upgrade older systems, and many newer motherboards feature
two or more USB 3.0 ports available through PCB headers.

Fourth generation[edit]
As of March 2015, some manufacturers have announced USB 3.1 type-C flash drives with read/write
speeds of around 530 MB/s.[29]

Storage capacity[edit]
The first USB flash drive appeared on the market in late 2000, providing a storage capacity of 8 MB.
[30][31]

Later, the maximum available storage capacity gradually doubled (16 MB, 32 MB, etc.)[32][33] all the

way up to reaching capacities of 512 GB[34] and 1 TB[35] by January 2013. However, as of May
2014 flash drives with anywhere from 8 to 128 GB are still frequently sold.

FACT, usbs appeared in the market in 2000 inputDeviceHistory.docx