In digital logic applications, bit-serial architectures send data one bit at a time, along a single wire, in contrast to bit-parallel architectures, in which data values are sent all bits 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 and have higher total performance than a single N-bit parallel processor.
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)