A floating point engine for lattice gauge calculations

The Fermilab Advanced Computer Program Multiple Array Processor System, which dedicated to solving problems in the field of quantum chromodynamics, is discussed. A typical system with 256 processors, 2.5 Gb of memory, and 64 Gb of online tape storage, delivers a peak performance of 5 billion floating point operations per second. The programming environment, Canopy, provides a comprehensive, hardware-independent, distributed processing platform from within the more familiar environments of FORTRAN, C, and elements of the system and give a brief description of the Canopy software. >