Serial Communication

Serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus.

“serial = over one line”

This exists in contrast to Parallel Communication. We could use Parallel Communication, which would be must faster, but we would need so many wires.

We use various clock pulses to time when things change. 16 bit → 16 clock cycles

I actually don’t understand these differences (some of them are not serial):

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/37814/usart-uart-rs232-usb-spi-i2c-ttl-etc-what-are-all-of-these-and-how-do-th

I need to read up on more articles. They don’t teach me this at school.

Serial Port

A serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time.

While interfaces such as Ethernet FireWire, and USB also send data as a serial stream, the term serial port usually denotes hardware compliant with RS-232 or a related standard, such as RS-485 or RS-422.

Protocols