Computer Engineering Commons^™

Reconfigurable Systems: A Potential Solution To The Von Neumann Bottleneck, Damian L. Miller

Senior Honors Theses

The difficulty of overcoming the disparity between processor speeds and data access speeds, a condition known as the von Neumann bottleneck, has been a source of consternation for computer hardware developers for many years. Although a number of temporary solutions have been proposed and implemented in modern machines, these solutions have only managed to treat the major symptoms, rather than solve the root problem. As the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every two years, the von Neumann bottleneck has continued to tighten in spite of these solutions, prompting some computer hardware professionals to advocate a paradigm shift …