John Von Neumann

John Louis von Neumann is a famous mathematician who

wrote the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. EDVAC
refers to Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer
which is one of the original electronic computers. This paper
laid the foundations of computer architecture.
He made major contributions in the use of memory to store
data in digital computers. Von Neumann is the inventor of the
merge sort algorithm, wherein the halves of an array are
sorted and merged. He also wrote the book, The Computer
and the Brain. This book is about the brain being viewed as a
computing machine.

Components of Von Neumann Architecture

The Von Neumann Architecture has the following
components:

 Central Processing Unit (CPU)

 Immediate Access Store (IAS)
 Input / Output (I/O)

Central Processing Unit

The CPU governs the computer and handles the data. It has
four main parts as follows:

 Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)

 This part handles all the arithmetic and logic
operations such as calculations and comparisons.
Control Unit
  This part handles the movement of instructions to
and from the memory and the execution of
instructions one at a time.
Registers
 There are different types of registers depending on
the information being stored.
 Program Counter – stores location of next
instruction
 Current Instruction Register – stores current
instruction being implemented
 Accumulators – store results of calculations and
comparisons
 Status Register – stores data about the last
operation
 Interrupt Register – stores information regarding
an interruption that occurred
Clock
 Instructions are executed to the beat of the clock.
The faster the clock, the faster the computer is.

Immediate Access Store

This is commonly referred to as the Random Access Memory
(RAM) or Main Memory. It stores both instructions and data.
Before Von Neumann, computers used to divide memory into
instructions memory and data memory, which made it
complex. Von Neumann discovered that there’s no difference
between the nature of an instruction and the nature of data.
Buses which allow the movement of instructions and data
between different parts of the computer is called a data bus.
Buses that detect locations in memory is called an address
bus.
Input / Output
I/O refers to the accessories for inputting and outputting of
data. A computer needs to read in data and send out data
through I/O ports. An I/O controller is an interface that allows
a user to attach any I/O device to the computer and send data
in or out of the computer.

Advantages of Von Neumann Architecture

Here are some advantages of the Von Neumann architecture:

 Control Unit retrieves data and instruction in the same

manner from one memory. Design and development of
the Control Unit is simplified, cheaper and faster.
 Data from input / output devices and from memory are
retrieved in the same manner.
 Organization of memory is done by programmers which
allows them to utilize the memory’s whole capacity.

Disadvantages of Von Neumann Architecture

Here are some disadvantages of the Von Neumann
architecture:

 Parallel implementation of program is not allowed due to

sequential instruction processing.
 Von Neumann bottleneck – Instructions can only be
carried out one at a time and sequentially.
 Risk of an instruction being rewritten due to an error in
the program.