APE project: a Gigaflop processor for lattice calculations

A new special purpose parallel processor (APE) presently under development is presented. The theoretical computing power of the processor is 1 Giga-Flop and the memory can be expanded to 512 Mega-bytes. Sixteen 52 bit floating point processors each with a computing power of 64 Mega-Flops are driven in parallel as a single instruction multiple data machine under the control of a 3081/E. Each floating point unit is connected to two 8 Mega-byte memories which can also be accessed by the 3081.E. Though this machine can be used as a general purpose array processor the hardware has been optimized for lattice QCD calculations.