Von Neumann Bottleneck

Definitions

1. The performance limitation caused by the shared bus between CPU and memory in Von Neumann architecture — the processor spends significant time waiting for data transfer rather than computing. Mitigated by caches, prefetching, and parallel architectures, but fundamentally limits single-threaded performance.

   In plain English: The speed limit caused by data having to travel between the processor and memory through a single channel.

   Example: "The algorithm is compute-bound in theory but memory-bound in practice — classic Von Neumann bottleneck with random access patterns."

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