(pronounced von noi-man) An early computer created by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann (1903-1957). It included three components used by most computers today: a CPU; a slow-to-access storage area, like a hard drive ; and secondary fast-access memory (RAM ). The machines stored instructions as binaryvalues (creating the stored program concept) and executed instructions sequentially – the processor fetched instructions one at a time and processed them. Today “von Neumann architecture” often refers to the sequential nature of computers based on this model.
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