What Is Harvard Architecture?

When Harvard Architecture was first introduced, it was the talk of the town. People were so excited that they couldn't contain themselves when they saw the two-part system storing instructions and data. It's not that people didn't have computers in the past; the difference is that those computers were single-component systems, whereas with the Harvard architecture, there would be two! Harvard architecture is a super cool computer system that contains two separate areas for commands or instructions and data. In Harvard architecture, the media, format and nature of the two parts of the system may differ, as two separate structures represent the two systems. There are many ways to build a computer, but Harvard architecture is one of the most common. A Harvard architecture is where your data and instructions are stored in different places. For example, early computers would store their instructions on punch cards and their data on tape. Modern computers might put both processes in the same hardware design, but they're still distinct. One advantage of Harvard architecture is that it can be more efficient than other designs if you don't need to access both types of information simultaneously. There are two types of people in the world you should know about: those who like Harvard architecture and think it's a waste of time. The Harvard architecture was first proposed by John von Neumann and has since been implemented in many computers, including most modern CPUs. The idea is that code and data should be separate to interact more easily. But what if you combine some code and data systems features while preserving separation in others? That's where modified Harvard architectures come in. One example is using two caches with one common address space. And there are certainly plenty more where that came from!