Shift register

In digital circuits, a shift register is a cascade of flip flops, sharing the same clock, in which the output of each flip-flop is connected to the 'data' input of the next flip-flop in the chain, resulting in a circuit that shifts by one position the 'bit array' stored in it, 'shifting in' the data present at its input and 'shifting out' the last bit in the array, at each transition of the clock input.

More generally, a shift register may be multidimensional, such that its 'data in' and stage outputs are themselves bit arrays: this is implemented simply by running several shift registers of the same bit-length in parallel.

Shift registers can have both parallel and serial inputs and outputs. These are often configured as 'serial-in, parallel-out' (SIPO) or as 'parallel-in, serial-out' (PISO). There are also types that have both serial and parallel input and types with serial and parallel output. There are also 'bidirectional' shift registers which allow shifting in both directions: L→R or R→L. The serial input and last output of a shift register can also be connected to create a 'circular shift register'.

These are the simplest kind of shift registers. The data string is presented at 'Data In', and is shifted right one stage each time 'Data Advance' is brought high. At each advance, the bit on the far left (i.e. 'Data In') is shifted into the first flip-flop's output. The bit on the far right (i.e. Data Out) is shifted out and lost.

The data are stored after each flip-flop on the 'Q' output, so there are four storage 'slots' available in this arrangement, hence it is a 4-bit Register. To give an idea of the shifting pattern, imagine that the register holds 0000 (so all storage slots are empty). As 'Data In' presents 1,0,1,1,0,0,0,0 (in that order, with a pulse at 'Data Advance' each time—this is called clocking or strobing) to the register, this is the result. The left hand column corresponds to the left-most flip-flop's output pin, and so on.

So the serial output of the entire register is 10110000. It can be seen that if data were to be continued to input, it would get exactly what was put in, but offset by four 'Data Advance' cycles. This arrangement is the hardware equivalent of a queue. Also, at any time, the whole register can be set to zero by bringing the reset (R) pins high.

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