There are a few new technologies affecting human input device design. The most important of these are the emerging serial bus standards: USB and SMBus. While USB offers benefits to existing peripherals, its real importance lies in its potential to facilitate the creation of new HIDs. SMBus is the control bus for Smart Batteries, and also offers an easy way to communicate to a variety of other devices like digital potentiometers, EEPROMs, temperature sensors, etc.