Why is "usb" process using 100% of processor?

My new 15" MBP (2.3 GHz version) was feeling like it was running hot, so I opened Activity Monitor expecting to see another Kernel Task gone wild situation. Instead I saw that a process called usb was using 100% of the processor's capacity. I honestly don't know much about computers, so I have no idea if a usb 'process' is related to USB 'devices', but at the time there were no USB devices plugged in. I was able to kill the process, and it didn't seem to affect anything I was doing.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone else know if it's related to the Kernal Task issue?

Overheating in Ottawa.