Computer architecture Block diagram of a basic computer with uniprocessor CPU. Black lines indicate data flow, whereas red lines indicate control flow. Arrows indicate the direction of flow. In computer engineering , computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, the description may include the instruction set architecture design, microarchitecture design, logic design , and implementation . [3] History The first documented computer architecture was in the correspondence between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace , describing the analytical engine . When building the computer Z1 in 1936, Konrad Zuse described in two patent applications for his future projects that machine instructions could be stored in the same storage used for data, i.e., the stored-program conc