The von Neumann model states that the program must be stored in memory. This is totally different from the architecture of early computers in which only the data was stored in memory: the programs for their task was implemented by manipulating a set of switches or by changing the wiring system. The memory of modern computers hosts both a program and its corresponding data. This implies that both the data and programs should have the same format, because they are stored in memory. In fact, they are stored as binary patterns in memory—a sequence of 0s and 1s.