Question

A 32-bit parallel bus clocked at a frequency of 300 MHz is to be replaced with a USB-like bus consisting of just a single serial channel.

(a) What is the peak throughput of the parallel bus, in Mbytes per second?

Note: 1 Mbyte/second = 8 x 10^6 bits/second, 1 MHz = 10^6 Hz

(b) If we were to replace this parallel bus with a serial bus with only a single data channel, what is the minimum frequency for clocking the data on the serial bus to achieve the same peak throughput as the parallel bus, ignoring all the overheads?

Answer 1