[geeks] Harvard v. von Neumann

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Dec 12, 2008, at 11:26 , Sridhar Ayengar wrote:

> [I tried to send this before, but I don't think it went out.  My  
> apologies if you're seeing this a second time.]
>
> According to my reading, the Burroughs B5000 and Manchester Atlas  
> were both Harvard architecture machines, and the GE-645 was von  
> Neumann.  Am I correct in my interpretation?

Not sure about the Atlas.

It seems to be a hybrid.

It did have private and general storage, but I don't believe it was a  
split between programs and data which indicate Harvard architecture.

Rather, it seems that private and general storage split OS and  
applications instead.

The supervisor (primitive OS) ran in the private stores, and managed  
the general store (drum, core, and tape) for applications as a 1-level  
paged storage system.

I believe instructions and data for each "half" were kept together  
otherwise.

So, to me that's a hybrid of the two architectures, not one or the  
other.


-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."