Harvard vs. vonNeuman ... was Re: Early computers was Re: Relay computers

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Tue Sep 28 08:25:47 2004

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter C Wallace <pcw_at_mesanet.com> writes:

 Peter> Actually many modern CPU's with caches are Harvard
 Peter> Architecture, the instruction streams and data streams only
 Peter> being mixed on the memory of the caches.

You could look at it that way, but I don't think that is the normal
usage of the terms.

 Peter> I've also heard that machines that mix data and instruction
 Peter> streams are more properly called "Princeton achitecture"...

Says who? That's the first time I've heard that term in 25+ years.

 Peter> Isn't self modifying code pretty much deprecated these days
 Peter> (aside from trampolines and such)

Self modifying code in the early sense of the word has been frowned on
for decades. But program loaders, pagers, and OS components like that
all modify program memory -- something that's only possible in von
Neumann machines.

        paul
Received on Tue Sep 28 2004 - 08:25:47 BST