Von Neumann architecture

• The Von Neumann architecture outlines the ‘infrastructure’ of how an electronic computer should store and processes information
  • Proposed in 1945
• The stored-program concept, part of Von Neumann’s architecture, is one that keeps its program instructions, as well as its data, in read-write, random-access memory (RAM)
• The program instructions can be loaded from secondary storage or ROM
• Key parts of the Von Neumann architecture
  • The processor is central and controls the system
  • The processor has direct access to some form of memory
  • The memory contains a ‘stored program’ which can be changed at any time but must be loaded to memory to be executed
  • The program occupies a contiguous block of memory.
  • The data required by the program is stored in the same memory
  • The stored program consists of individual instructions which are fetched, decoded and executed sequentially by the processor