EM4 Digital Electronics Practice Test 2026 – The Complete All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

In this design, there is a single memory space used for both code (instructions) and data, and the CPU accesses them over the same bus. That means instruction fetches and data reads/writes contend for the same bandwidth, which is a characteristic of Von Neumann architecture. It’s simpler and cheaper to implement because you don’t need separate memories or buses for instructions and data. By contrast, Harvard architecture uses separate memories and separate buses for instructions and data, allowing parallel access and higher potential throughput. Modified Harvard keeps some separation but isn’t the same single-bus setup. So using the same bus for both instructions and data points to the Von Neumann style.