logical choice. Creating a parallel port in a computer system is relatively simple, requiring only a latch to copy data onto a data bus. In contrast, most serial communication must first be converted back into parallel form by a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) before they may be directly connected to a data bus. The decreasing cost and better performance of integrated circuits has led to serial links being used in favor of parallel links; for example, IEEE 1284 printer ports vs. USB, Parallel ATA vs. Serial ATA, and FireWire or Thunderbolt are now the most common connectors for transferring data from audiovisual (AV) devices such as digital cameras or professional-grade scanners that used to require purchasing a SCSI HBA years ago. One huge advantage of having fewer wires/pins in a serial cable is the significant reduction in the size, the complexity of the connectors, and the associated costs. Designers of devices such as smartphones benefit from the development of connectors/ports that are small, durable, and still provide adequate performance. On the other hand, there has been a resurgence of parallel data links in RF communication. Rather than transmitting one bit at a time (as in Morse code and BPSK), well-known techniques such as PSM, PAM, and Multiple-input multiple-output communication send a few bits in parallel. (Each such group of bits is called a "symbol"). Such techniques can be extended to send an entire byte at once (256-QAM). See also Data transmission Serial port Bit-level parallelism References Data transmission