Parallel port Parallel port A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once, in parallel communication, as opposed to serial interfaces that send bits one at a time. To do this, parallel ports require multiple data lines in their cables and port connectors, and tend to be larger than contemporary serial ports which only require one data line. There are many types of parallel ports, but the term has become most closely associated with the
NAS Parallel Benchmarks serial versions of the benchmarks consistent with the parallel versions and defined a problem size "Class W" for small-memory systems. NPB 2.4 of 2002 offered a new MPI implementation and introduced another still larger problem size "Class D". It also augmented one benchmark with I/O-intensive subtypes. NPB 3 retained the MPI implementation from NPB 2 and came in more flavors, namely OpenMP, Java and High Performance Fortran. These new parallel implementations were derived from the serial codes in NPB 2.3 with additional optimizations. NPB 3.1 and NPB 3.2 added three more benchmarks, which, however, were not available across all implementations;