What is it?
John Von Neumann was important scientist and engineer which, among other things, proposed in a high level of abstraction, a general system architecture which is used to this day.
It consists of four elements:
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Memory
Stores data, variables, and all instructions of the program.
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Processor
Actually executes the instructions read from memory into the data also in memory, in cycles of read-execute-write.
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Control Unit
The control unit decodes the instructions and “guide” the data in the system.
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Arithmetic Logic Unit
Calculates all logical and arithmetic calculations needed by the program.
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Accumulator
Temporarily registers the calculation made by the ALU.
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Input/ Output
Represents all devices which interact with the bus, as keyboards, mouses, displays.
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Bus
The bus connects the memory, processor and all I/O devices together.