The maspar is a
SIMD parallel processing machine.
Typical number of processing units is between 1024 and 16384.
The maspar has a single instruction controller that runs
code on multiple processing elements. Each instruction can have
a mask indicating if a particular processor should run
an instruction or skip it.
Processors are organized in a 2-D lattice, so that each instruction can work on
data from its own local memory, or the memory of
any of its 8 neighbors. (Some texts consider this to be a torus.) There is also a limited ability
to get data through the router, but this is of course slower. The maspar system doesn't have an operating
system of its own, so it relies on a front end computer such as a unix system.