Question

If I understand correctly modern computers are modeled after the Von Neumann architecture. I have sometimes seen reference to alternatives, but haven’t really seen any very good descriptions of how non-Von Neumann architectures would be organised and function.

Does anyone have any examples? What are the advantages/disadvantages of alternative computer organization?

Answer 1

I believe the most common one would be the Harvard architecture or the Modified Harvard architecture which is used in a lot of ARM based chips. I am sure there are many differences, but here is one that stands out

In a computer using the Harvard architecture, the CPU can both read an instruction and perform a data memory access at the same time, even without a cache.