Von Neumann architecture

Dr. John von Neumann:

John von Neumann circa the 1940s

Any discussion concerning computers must include the contributions of the famed Hungarian mathematician/genius Dr. John von Neumann. He was the first to stipulate, in his famous 1945 paper, the general requirements for an electronic computer. This device was called a stored-program computer, since the data and program instructions are kept in electronic memory. The specification was a departure from earlier designs where computers were programmed via hard wiring. Von Neumann's basic design has endured to this day, as practically all modern-day processors exhibit some vestiges of this design architecture (see the following figure):

Von Neumann architecture

Von Neumann's design basic components are tabulated as follows:

So, how does this architecture relates to parallel processors/supercomputers? You might ask. Well, supercomputers consist of nodes, which are, in fact, individual computers. These computers contain processors with the same architectural elements described previously.