
2.1 OVERVIEW
A normal desktop computer is based on Von Neumann architecture. It is also called a stored program
computer because the program’s instructions and its associated data are stored in the same memory as
shown in Figure 2.1.
The program instructions tell the system what operation is to be performed and on what data.
The above model is based on the fact that every practical problem that needs to be solved must have
some associated data. Let us consider a situation where a list of numbers is to be sorted in ascending
order. This problem obviously has the following two parts:
(1) The list: say 9, 8, 1, −1, 4, 2, 6, 15, 3
(2) A procedure ...