Bit-serial architecture Bit-serial architecture In digital logic applications, bit-serial architectures send data one bit at a time, along a single wire, in contrast to bit-parallel word architectures, in which data values are sent all bits or a word at once along a group of wires. All computers before 1951, and most of the early massive parallel processing machines used a bit-serial architecture—they were serial computers. Bit-serial architectures were developed for digital signal processing in the 1960s through 1980s, including efficient structures for bit-serial multiplication and accumulation. Often N serial processors will take less FPGA area and have a higher total performance than
Serial communication more specific name, to reduce confusion. Keyboard and mouse cables and ports are almost invariably serial—such as PS/2 port and Apple Desktop Bus and USB. The cables that carry digital video are almost invariably serial—such as coax cable plugged into a HD-SDI port, a webcam plugged into a USB port or Firewire port, Ethernet cable connecting an IP camera to a Power over Ethernet port, FPD-Link, etc. Other such cables and ports, transmitting data one bit at a time, include Serial ATA, Serial SCSI, Ethernet cable plugged into Ethernet ports, the Display Data Channel using previously reserved pins of the