Beyond the Von Neumann Machine

Communication and I/O are often seen as peripheral activities for the processing elements. This can be historically explained as the original von Neumann concept has been dominating processor design for decades. With the advent of embedded systems that can contain several tens of processing elements, it is clear that a system level approach is needed. We have argued that in such a system all elements must be designed as programmable building blocks. This is derived from the original CSP model that equally applies to software and hardware.