Shift Register - Uses

Uses

One of the most common uses of a shift register is to convert between serial and parallel interfaces. This is useful as many circuits work on groups of bits in parallel, but serial interfaces are simpler to construct. Shift registers can be used as simple delay circuits. Several bidirectional shift registers could also be connected in parallel for a hardware implementation of a stack.

SIPO registers are commonly attached to the output of microprocessors when more output pins are required than are available. This allows several binary devices to be controlled using only two or three pins - the devices in question are attached to the parallel outputs of the shift register, then the desired state of all those devices can be sent out of the microprocessor using a single serial connection. Similarly, PISO configurations are commonly used to add more binary inputs to a microprocessor than are available - each binary input (i.e. a switch or button, or more complicated circuitry designed to output high when active) is attached to a parallel input of the shift register, then the data is sent back via serial to the microprocessor using several fewer lines than originally required.

Shift registers can also be used as pulse extenders. Compared to monostable multivibrators, the timing has no dependency on component values, however it requires external clock and the timing accuracy is limited by a granularity of this clock. Example: Ronja Twister, where five 74164 shift registers create the core of the timing logic this way (schematic).

In early computers, shift registers were used to handle data processing: two numbers to be added were stored in two shift registers and clocked out into an arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) with the result being fed back to the input of one of the shift registers (the accumulator) which was one bit longer since binary addition can only result in an answer that is the same size or one bit longer.

Many computer languages include instructions to 'shift right' and 'shift left' the data in a register, effectively dividing by two or multiplying by two for each place shifted.

Very large serial-in serial-out shift registers (thousands of bits in size) were used in a similar manner to the earlier delay line memory in some devices built in the early 1970s. Such memories were sometimes called circulating memory. For example, the DataPoint 3300 terminal stored its display of 25 rows of 72 columns of upper-case characters using fifty-four 200-bit shift registers, arranged in six tracks of nine packs each, providing storage for 1800 six-bit characters. The shift register design meant that scrolling the terminal display could be accomplished by simply pausing the display output to skip one line of characters.