Bit-serial architecture
logic circuit architecture that acts on one bit at a time
In computer architecture, 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 digital computers built 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.
The HP Nut processor used in many Hewlett-Packard calculators operated bit-serially.
Assuming N is an arbitrary integer number, N serial processors will often take less FPGA area and have a higher total performance than a single N-bit parallel processor.
The public source identifies “Bit-serial architecture” as logic circuit architecture that acts on one bit at a time. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bit-serial, architecture and logic.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bit-serial architecture” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.