Von Neumann architecture

The von Neumann architecture is a design model for a stored-program digital computer that uses a processing unit and a single separate storage structure to hold both instructions and data. It is named after the mathematician and early computer scientist John von Neumann. Such computers implement a universal Turing machine and have a sequential architecture.

A stored-program digital computer is one that keeps its programmed instructions, as well as its data, in read-write, random access memory (RAM). Stored-program computers were an advancement over the program-controlled computers of the 1940s, such as the Colossus and the ENIAC, which were programmed by setting switches and inserting patch leads to route data and to control signals between various functional units. In the vast majority of modern computers, the same memory is used for both data and program instructions.

The terms "von Neumann architecture" and "stored-program computer" are generally used interchangeably, and that usage is followed in this article. In contrast, the Harvard architecture

stores a program in a modifiable form, but without using the same physical storage or format for general data.