A serial computer is a computer typified by

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 d ...

i.e., internally operating on one

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented a ...

digit Digit may refer to: Mathematics and science * Numerical digit, as used in mathematics or computer science ** Hindu-Arabic numerals, the most common modern representation of numerical digits * Digit (anatomy), the most distal part of a limb, such ...

for each clock cycle. Machines with serial main storage devices such as acoustic or

magnetostrictive Magnetostriction (cf. electrostriction) is a property of magnetic materials that causes them to change their shape or dimensions during the process of magnetization. The variation of materials' magnetization due to the applied magnetic field chang ...

delay lines and rotating magnetic devices were usually serial computers. Serial computers require much less hardware than their parallel computing counterpart, but are much slower. There are modern variants of the serial computer available as a soft microprocessor which can serve niche purposes where size of the CPU is the main constraint. The first computer that was not serial (the first parallel computer) was the Whirlwind in 1951. A serial computer is not necessarily the same as a computer with a

1-bit architecture In computer architecture, 1-bit integers or other data units are those that are (1/8 octet) wide. Also, 1-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers of that size. ...

, which is a subset of the serial computer class. 1-bit computer instructions operate on data consisting of single bits, whereas a serial computer can operate on ''N''-bit data widths, but does so a single bit at a time.

Serial machines

* EDVAC (1949) * BINAC (1949) * SEAC (1950) * UNIVAC I (1951) * Elliott Brothers Elliott 153 (1954) * Bendix G-15 (1956) * LGP-30 (1956) * Elliott Brothers Elliott 803 (1958) *

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(1958) * D-17B guidance computer (1962) * PDP-8/S (1966) * General Electric GE-PAC 4040 process control computer * F14 CADC (1970) transferred all data serially, but internally operated on many bits in parallel *

Kenbak-1 The Kenbak-1 is considered by the Computer History Museum, the Computer Museum of America and the American Computer Museum to be the world's first "personal computer", invented by John Blankenbaker (born 1929) of Kenbak Corporation in 1970, and fi ...

(1971) * Datapoint 2200 (1971) * HP-35 (1972)

Massively parallel

Most of the early

massive parallel processing Massively parallel is the term for using a large number of computer processors (or separate computers) to simultaneously perform a set of coordinated computations in parallel. GPUs are massively parallel architecture with tens of thousands of t ...

machines were built out of individual serial processors, including: * ICL Distributed Array Processor (1979) * Goodyear MPP (1983) *

Connection Machine A Connection Machine (CM) is a member of a series of massively parallel supercomputers that grew out of doctoral research on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computers by Danny Hillis at Massachusetts Institute of Te ...

CM-1 (1985) * Connection Machine CM-2 (1987) * MasPar MP-1 (1990) 32-bit architecture, internally processed 4 bits at a time * VIRAM1 computational RAM (2003)

Serial machines

Massively parallel

See also

References

Further reading