This paper presents a single-chip parallel architecture for advanced encryption standard (AES). The proposed architecture uses the thread approach, which integrate fully pipelined parallel units, that process 128 bits/cycle and quadruples the data throughput. The threads architecture allows the reduction of the clock rate by a factor of four, while maintaining the data throughput, and consumes lesser power. The prototype runs at data rate of 7.68 Gbps on a Xilinx xc2V1500 Virtex-II FPGA. The data rate shows that the proposed thread approach produces one of the fastest single-chip FPGA implementation currently available. In addition, the proposed architecture is scalable to 192, 256 and higher bits.