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> But the biggest thing is probably that it made assemblers and compilers possible. Well, I'm not sure if that's strictly true. Maybe you could still have them
by jchw 3y ago
> But the biggest thing is probably that it made assemblers and compilers possible. Well, I'm not sure if that's strictly true. Maybe you could still have them without a shared memory architecture. But the shared memory architecture made them a whole lot easier.
I think the actual important part is being able to address and manipulate code like it's data somehow, rather than the specific architecture. Having two separate address spaces for code and data doesn't necessarily prevent that, though it's surely simpler with only one.
- jecel 3y agoYou can have a compiler or assembler in a Harvard Architecture computer, but having separate instruction and data memories means that you can't generate the instructions and then execute them. You need some scheme to move stuff from one memory to another. Think of a PIC or AVR8, for example, rewriting its own Flash memory which isn't even the same width as the data memory.