(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
binary values (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.
