Talking Tech with Ajay Bhatt, The Co-Inventor of USB

The genius behind USB, PCIe and much more

Pragyan ’18 gifted me with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview Mr Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of USB. Through various groundbreaking innovations, his presence is still very much felt in the PC space. Inspired by something as meager as a power outlet on the wall, he proceeded to simplify our computing experience and in many ways, spearhead the development of consumer technology.

Back in 2009, Intel launched a massive ad campaign titled ‘Sponsors of Tomorrow’, with Ajay Bhatt as its poster-child. So I decided to ask him about this celebrity status and what got him there.

Intel portrayed you as quite the rockstar, in an ad campaign, back in 2009. How did it feel to acquire a rather unique celebrity status?

The whole campaign was about engineers, and Intel wanted to make a point that when it comes to engineering, they too have rockstars, much like in the movie industries and sports. We are the leading manufacturers of electronics, and our engineers are ‘our’ rockstars. They were looking for an invention that a common person could relate to, and after searching through our portfolio of innovative products and patents, they determined that the USB was one that a lot of people knew about, and they could appreciate its everyday usage. That’s how they picked me. Till then, even though I had done a lot of creative work, people didn’t know about me as such, and that included my family. They didn’t know about the work that I had done. Most of all, my relatives and my friends have come to appreciate what I’ve done. I’m proud of this campaign, because it highlighted engineers, and I was just one of many that Intel has, and had. It feels good that at last, people are aware of the brains behind this bleeding edge technology.

There are well over 100 patents in your name. What is it that kept you going throughout your career?

Well, you sort of come across things to do, because, if you’re just perceptive and look around, there are plenty of opportunities to improve, or invent things or address an unmet need. So my primary focus has never been on patents. If I just focused on patents, I could probably get 500 patents. But instead, I looked at unmet needs in my areas of expertise. Then we pursued the technology that would meet those needs. Once we worked on it and looked at some idea that is original, we filed a patent. My company would always encourage us to file patents because it gives them the exclusive rights. It’s a byproduct of what you’re doing.

‘Startups’ and ‘entrepreneurs’ are increasingly becoming household terms, owing to the breakneck pace of development in the field of technology. The proposition of the USB being the product of a stand-alone company is definitely a worthwhile one. Ajay Bhatt, however, had a completely different take on the topic.

If the startup space was as booming as it is today back when you came up with the idea of USB, would it still have been royalty-free, or would we have witnessed the rise of a tech giant?

“I never thought of initiating a startup. And quite frankly, ideas as big as the USB or as broadly adopted as the USB, would probably never happen if this technology were a startup. Technology like USB or PCI Express is like creating an infrastructure, right? It is like constructing a highway. People then build cars, trucks, tractors or whatever and then they drive over it.”

When it comes to designing a highway, yeah, you can charge a little bit of toll, but you can’t charge too much. Our primary goal in defining USB was to make computers easy to use, thereby, easy to interface to. In order to do that, we needed a bunch of companies to work with us. We wanted someone to write software, we wanted someone to make the systems, we wanted someone to build the chips for us, and so on. It was this diversity of expertise that we brought together which allowed the USB to takeoff. This is all it was; if you can make computers easy to use, then people would buy more computers, and if they buy more computers, Intel, as a company would still benefit as we can sell more chips, right? When you look at the bigger picture, instead of direct revenue due to the USB, you get indirect revenue by creating a much bigger market for your products.

Keeping in line with the current standards of connectivity, we asked about his thoughts on USB Type C and the wireless revolution.

Considering the introduction of Type-C, do you envision any further improvements for the USB standard in the near future?

I think so. One of the things that is happening with Type C is that it is getting merged with Thunderbolt. So now, Thunderbolt technology is being delivered on the same connector as the USB. As we go forward, these two technologies will synergise and hopefully, it will merge, if appropriate. Like I said, you need one wire and that wire is USB type C.

Do you think the wireless revolution poses a threat to USB?

I don’t think ‘threat’ is the word. Wireless technology is quite complementary to what USB is. There are a whole bunch of instances where wireless is sufficient, and you don’t need to use the wires. I think, with the advent of 5G, you will see that even more. I don’t suppose it’s either-or. But then, there are instances where wired connections offer much higher performance, like charging. Even though there is wireless charging, USB based charging and more importantly, turbocharging capabilities are coming up, which are significantly better. So these are complementary technologies. Wireless instances are easy to use, while at the same time, pairing two devices wirelessly require some amount of knowledge. Of course, it is getting easier, but connecting wires is just very easy.

To cap it all off, the interview concluded with a question about the future of PC technology.

In many ways, the USB reimagined the way we think of computing. What do you think is the next leap forward for the PC space?

The 5G is usually associated with phones. I say 5G technology is going to come to PCs. PCs are getting lighter, thinner, right? In fact, the computer that I’m using is a merge of PC and a tablet. Windows 10 and beyond, make that transitory experience much better. I think we’ll also see a merge of AR and VR. One of the biggest things with the PCs is VR, right? PC as we know, comes in different forms and shapes. I have seen PCs in a belt-buckle. Or a PC motherboard smaller than an iPhone motherboard. So a tremendous amount of performance of PC architecture is being packed in a lot of different form factors. We’ll see PCs in different form factors play a significant role in the 5G unification with AR, VR, MR and also contextual computing.

While a completely wireless future is being conceptualized and implemented rapidly, the wired connectors are far from being obsolete. With the current rate of advancement in the data transfer speeds and single-cable power delivery, the universal ‘infobahn’ is not too far away!

This interview was taken in collaboration with Sanjiv

This article was originally published on medium.com

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