Practice question · True or false
Storing instructions and data in one memory is what makes a stored-program computer able to treat a program as data, the property compilers and loaders depend on.
Hints
- Ask what a compiler is doing when it writes a program.
- A compiler's output is data to the compiler and instructions to the CPU.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. The single memory is what lets a compiler emit a program as ordinary bytes, a loader place it, and a debugger inspect it. The cost is the von Neumann bottleneck, one bus carrying both, which is why caches split into separate instruction and data paths internally while keeping one address space.
Practise Processor, Memory, and Buses
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