Talk:von Neumann architecture

Open problems

Currently this "von Neumann architecture" article is tagged with "Category: Open problems".

My understanding is that the "von Neumann architecture" itself is not an open problem, since many implementations of it seem to be working fine.

Is there, perhaps, one or more unsolved problems or other open problems associated with "von Neumann architecture", perhaps something related to the "von Neumann bottleneck"? If so, it would be nice if they were explicitly spelled out in this article rather than letting readers like me wonder what the open problems are. If not, the "Category: Open problems" tag should be removed. --DavidCary (talk) 23:17, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Done. The Von Neumann bottleneck is not an example of an open problem. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Does the use of ROM make an architecture non Von Neumann?

It seems to me that the statement " both program instructions and data in read–write, random-access memory (RAM)" is incorrect. Does the use of ROM for instructions (or data) make an architecture not Von Neumann . DGerman (talk) 00:06, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to make a note that this isn't even simply incorrect in the context of non-Von Neumann architectures, but it is also an incorrect description of the subject matter which the sentence in question is actually describing which is the stored-program computer. That jojo (talk) 15:05, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

The article no longer speaks of instructions or data necessarily being stored in read-write memory. Guy Harris (talk) 06:44, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

"A control unit that includes an instruction register and a program counter"

Hello,

Not sure where to ask this so I'll do it here. Please tell me if you want this comment removed.

I learned in class that the instruction register and a program counter are the same things.

Why the use of the word "and" then ? Saulepleureur (talk) 15:05, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Because whoever taught you that in class might have been mistaken, in which case you learned something that's not correct. The instruction register Wikipedia page says that "the instruction register (IR) or current instruction register (CIR) is the part of a CPU's control unit that holds the instruction currently being executed or decoded". whereas the program counter Wikipedia page says that "The program counter (PC) ... is a processor register that indicates where a computer is in its program sequence." The two definitions given in the article are not the same - the program counter indicates where the current instruction was fetched from or where the next instruction is going to be fetched from, whereas the instruction register contains the instruction in question. (In practice, modern machines might not have something as simple as an "instruction register", but that's a different matter.) Guy Harris (talk) 06:40, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Citation standards for explanatory remarks

Under the mitigations section there is a tag. However, the explanations are fairly straight forward for each technique and all boil down to reducing the number of times main memory needs to be touched either by improving cache's hit rate, expanding the cache, or performing instructions with values already in the registers. AFAIK most of the literature about these techniques do not feel the need to explain this, as it is assumed that the reader can infer why improving, e.g., the cache hit rate would reduce bottlenecking.

If we expand this to clarify, what are the standards for the sources that would need to be used? I feel uncomfortable with some of the sources that are typically considered RS because the loss of precision that comes with explaining technical topics to laypersons. --Ostip (talk) 22:03, 9 January 2025 (UTC)