Design of an Elementary Computer

Overview

The design techniques and circuit elements presented so far indeed suffice to build a complete, albeit simple computer. The prototype of the program- mable, digital computer is the von Neumann architecture, which is both presented and implemented in this chapter.

The von Neumann architecture has remained the basic model of com- puters from its inception in 1945 until the present, and the number of funda- mental concepts added in this long period has remained remarkably small. To mention are multiple instances of registers, the index register or, more generally, the computed address, the interrupt, and the use of several proc- essors accessing a common store.