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Harvard vs Von Neuman

A project log for PDP - Processor Design Principles

Distilling my experience and wisdom about the architecture, organisation and design choices of my CPUs

yann-guidon-ygdesYann Guidon / YGDES 02/04/2018 at 01:041 Comment

That one is going to be one of the most controversial because it goes against most of the established practices.

Recently I have decided to side with Harvard. There are two reasons : speed and safety.

As a side-benefit, it allows the designer to use weird instruction widths.

(to be continued, the subject is quite hot)

Discussions

Samuel A. Falvo II wrote 02/25/2018 at 06:34 point

Most contemporary processors are actually Harvard-architecture devices in disguise.  If your CPU has a split instruction and data cache, it's actually Harvard architecture under the hood.

Looks like Harvard architecture won this debate.

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