Serial port Windows. Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time (in contrast to a parallel port). Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data was transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals, and various peripherals. While such interfaces as Ethernet, FireWire, and USB all send data as a serial stream, the term "serial port" usually identifies hardware more or less compliant to the RS-232 standard, intended to interface with a modem or with a similar communication device. Modern computers without serial
Parallel algorithm wall, and thus multicore systems have become more widespread, making parallel algorithms of more general use. The cost or complexity of serial algorithms is estimated in terms of the space (memory) and time (processor cycles) that they take. Parallel algorithms need to optimize one more resource, the communication between different processors. There are two ways parallel processors communicate, shared memory or message passing. Shared memory processing needs additional locking for the data, imposes the overhead of additional processor and bus cycles, and also serializes some portion of the algorithm. Message passing processing uses channels and message boxes but this communication