So far, I’ve come across these three terms:
- Princeton (John von Neumann) architecture
- Harvard architecture
- Modified Harvard architecture
Is that it? What about some of the other alternatives?
Depends how far you stretch the definition. Those listed are a subset of RASP machine models, which are a subset of turing machines, which is a subset of finite state machines, but as far as “general purpose computing architectures” that’s about it as far as I’m aware… Unless you get into weird application specific stuff like differentiable neural computers.
You could also go the other way and look at how the basic principles of those architectures get expanded on IE Von Neumann -> ARM -> Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) -> Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) -> etc.
Would a quantum computer count as a finite state machine? If not, wouldn’t it be an example of something different?
Neuromorphics are a big one that will soon have a large presence. This also sort of encompasses tensor units and other AI specific hardwares. Maybe take a look at ASICs and unconventional computing.