Probably not mistaken if I say that most people at the household level believe that the computer and everything connected with it are the achievements of science of the last decades of the last century. In fact, the principles of von Neumann, the work of computers, the theoretical foundations of building computer networks, were formulated in the first half of the twentieth century.
The main developer of the theory of computing systems at that time was the famous US mathematician John von Neumann. By the way, it is worth saying that in part this happened relatively by accident. Neumann was included in the scientific group in 1944, which worked on the creation of the first ENIAC tube electronic computer. Somehow, during a regular discussion with colleagues, the scientist did not very confidently suggest a fundamentally new concept for creating a device for computing. To the surprise of Neumann himself, his partners G. Goldstein and A. Burks supported the idea of Neumann, and two years later a scientific article appeared. It proposed completely previously unknown principles for creating a computing device, and then called "von Neumann principles." More than half a century has passed since the first public presentation of Neumann's ideas, but to this day, such aspects as computer architecture, von Neumann's principles, are the classical theory of building computer systems. The fundamental difference between the new concept was that it proposed to move away from the usual decimal information storage system and switch to binary. It was more convenient for such use and provided much greater opportunities to increase the volume of this information, both in terms of its storage and transmission.
In addition, von Neumann's principles made it possible to process not only numerical information, but also textual, audio, and others.
Another significant discovery of Neumann was his proposed solution for storing the information itself. Previously, this work was carried out almost manually, by interconnecting the necessary components of the computer with each other to ensure the exchange of information that was stored in each of these compartments. On the already mentioned ENIAC computer, this procedure took at least several days, and very often during this procedure the technician broke down - the electronic lamps failed. Neumann suggested that the switching program also be encoded as binary code and stored in the computer itself.
The scientist not only formulated ideas that later became widely known as the principles of von Neumann, but also developed the technological structure of computers, this concept today is more often referred to as “computer architecture”. The main components of the new architecture, according to Neumann, should be:
- control device;
- logical device;
- central processor;
- memory complex, including internal and external;
- input / output devices.
In a structure constructed in this way, in a computer, special instructions are read from memory, and then they are executed by the processor. The order of execution of commands is determined by a special counter of commands. The presence of such a device is now one of the hallmarks of the computer architecture proposed by Neumann.
In general, the computer architecture solutions developed and, in fact, tested and implemented by himself, have become so universal and fundamental that today in a professional environment, machines created according to these principles are called von Neumann machines. This does not apply only to those where there is no command counter.
A possible departure from these principles is possible only in the future, when the idea of logical information processing will be based on the development of the theory of computer systems .