Comment by HarHarVeryFunny
5 hours ago
Von Neumann's architecture (i.e. report on the EDVAC) didn't focus on random-access memory, and in fact his whole discussion on memory is rather rambling. The EDVAC itself, which the report is nominally describing, used serial-access mercury delay line memory. What really matters from an architectural POV is memory address-ability, not speed of access (random vs serial).
The whole document is, as the title promises, really more of an engineering one - a report on the EDVAC - rather than some clean abstract treatise on computer architecture.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130314123032/http://qss.stanfo...
When the report was written there wasn't any random access memory. The only memory suited to computers in 1946 was the ultrasonic delay line as implemented by Eckert. What makes it not-random access is that all the bits in the store are being constantly shifted and counted in a loop (about 1Mhz?), so you have to wait for the word you want to read/write to fly past and the controller grabs it then.