The Von Neumman Architecture
A Bit of Von Neumann: The Story Behind The Animation
If you haven't already, watch the video here.
Once upon a time, there were a group of powerful and intelligent creatures, who created a chaotic world, one that disregarded the simplest of common sense: a world where objects can be at 2 places at the same time, move into “higher levels” without passing anything in between, and waves are interchangeable with matter. No one truly understands why this world is as confusing as the way it is, why it is void of common scene, seemly governed by laws unlike any other. In fact, many people simply rejected this concept of chaos and inelegancy, creating a barrage of theories in an attempt to explain the world in a notion of elegance, grace, and beauty. They failed. The undeniable truth is this: this world, with all its chaos and inelegancy, works.
At the very start of the brave new world, there lived a gangster named “Bit”. He didn't feel significant; literally billions of them of them can fit in a small pocket. A surge of depression rushed over him every time he thought about his uselessness, about how no one truly understands him. That is, until he joined a gang of eight called “Byte”. The previously overwhelming notion of being misunderstood, being disregarded as a nothing but a waste of space, was suddenly replaced with that of understanding, and of intelligence. He felt, with his gang, that there was nothing they couldn't carry! One day, this belief was put to the test.
With absolutely no warning, a gang boss, by the terrifying name of “Keyboard”, gave them a very specific message to be delivered. Normally, this gang didn't take orders from anybody; however Keyboard was anything but ordinary. He came from the “Input” side of the royal “I/O” family, one of the four ancient subsystems that run the entire world. Using his relations, this family was ultimately responsible for every single thing that ever happened. Everyone in Byte knew this order was to be executed as fast as possible, so the gang wasted no time in boarding a bus, and took off towards their destination. Little did they know that there was a surprise right ahead.
With the bus was in full motion, a disguised police officer decided to start his investigation of a recent drug deal. Suspecting a gang was in the works, the police rapidly closed in on Byte. He should no mercy in arresting the crew, hand-cuffing all eight members without a second's notice. Though struggling to get free, Bit knew there was nothing to be done, and went with the officer. What happened next surprised the entire gang. The officer took them to a newly designed jail; one that was fast with punishment, volatile, but was expensive to build. Known to the convicts as “RAM”, this jail had many basic storage units named “cells”. Due to the new design, the jail intelligently randomly accesses of the cells it contains, meaning the 255th cell can be accessed without passing the first 254. Though locked up, they knew that freedom was as a matter of time, as they would shortly be taken to a court to prove their innocence.
After a minute amount of time, the police took them on a bus in the direction of the new court. This court was a novel design, composing of the traditional CU judge and the ALU jury, both of which were members of the royal families of the Four Subsystems. Appropriately named the CPU, the new court controls every process in the entire world. As this new design allowed for the judgement of prisons to speed up to the point where most of the time is wasted waiting for the prisoners to arrive from their holding cells in RAM, the creator of this world added a waiting room, referred by many as the “Cache”, to cut the time of transportation. This room is where the members of Byte were kept for a short instance. In just a few short seconds time, the previous court cleared and Byte was fetched into the court. The CPU was swift with judgement, confiscating the message which Keyboard asked us to deliver and acting it out to get a better understanding of the scope of the situation. Then, it thought of all the possible solutions to this problem and chose the best one, discarding the rest. Finally, CPU announced his verdict, and the gang of Byte was taking back to their cell until further use for them was available. Every single person in Byte shivered in terror at the thought that the rest of their lives are going to be spent behind the bars of RAM. Later that day, this thought was proven to be incorrect.
The gang sat quietly in jail, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Anything was better than sitting useless, unwanted in a cell. All the gang ever wanted was to make the world run with optimal efficiency. They wanted some action. As it turns out, what happened next didn't disappoint. With all amazing speed, an intruder was accessing the cells in RAM. This was no ordinary jail-buster; his name was “Monitor”, and he was the most widely known in all of the “Output” side of the royal “I/O” family. With no time to spare, Monitor quickly accessed the fifth cell, which held the members of Byte and released them from their prison. Almost immediately afterwards, the group boarded a bus, which sped its way toward Monitor's home. In just a short while, the bus arrived at their destination and the gang started a new life in the company of Monitor. Everything was going beautifully for the Bit! He wished this journey would last forever.
Ten seconds later, Byte was erased from history and the process was repeated.
Original Short story by Brian
Group: Brian, David, Kezaram, Govind, and Amy
Page 2 of 2
