Parallel vs Serial

[lhuser]

I've been talking with a couple of mates at school about this, but I still cannot come with an official answer. If Serail was proven to be much faster than Parallel, why didn't computer industry use Serial over parallel over time?

My guess was because of the technology not being capable to obtain such speeds and be still operatable at a workng state, but does anyone else know why?

 

[muz]

Interesting we learnt about this a few months ago at college
To understand fully you need to know the diff between parallel and serial transmission
basically in serial transmission e.g. USB the data is sent via an interface one bit at a time
whereas in parallel e.g. older printers and scanners the bits for a character are sent simultaneously along seperate data lines
disadvantages of paralell transmission
paralell cabling is much more expensive thats why you dont use parallel cables on lans etc cos the cabling would get too expensive
can get synchronisation errors over distance as the data is split and then reformed and if the parts arrive in different orders to the source they could be reassembled incorectly obviously there is error checking in plaqce but this wont always cath it
also if you have parallel wires sometimes data can pass over from one line to the other due to the magnetic field around the wire used to happen with IDE cable till they made them 80 wires instead of 40

Also in parallel transmission more processing is required as more is being transfered at one time

 

[xtremezx2]

isn't USB technically a serial connection?? we just don't have the serial port anymore.

 

[muz]

isn't USB technically a serial connection?? we just don't have the serial port anymore.

yer thats
Universal
Serial
Bus

but other ways of transmitting data such as lan cable are also serial

 

[sek3o1]

interesting i never knew that about parrellel ports!