Parallel vs Serial speed

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

David Kramer wrote:
> markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
> 
>> In the above examples, we see that the drives perform similarly, but that
>> the SATA interface gives an advantage in transfer speeds, but not the
>> 100mb/s vs 300mb/s advertised difference.
> 
> Here's something I don't understand.  My gut tells me that a parallel
> interface, which sends all the bits at once, should be several times
> faster than a serial interface, which must send one bit at a time.  So
> how is SATA faster than IDE?

Same reason parallel ports (old printer ports) went the way of the dodo in
favor of serial ports:  because it to get 8 pins (or whatever) to sync up
you have to run at a much slower rate (more than a factor of 8).

Matt

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