APE computers—past, present and future

APE is a family of supercomputers architecturally optimized for the numerical simulation of quantum field theories. Current generation APE systems (APEmille) have been commissioned at several European sites. When all planned systems are installed, later this year, a total peak processing power of about 2 TFlops will be available. A new generation system, apeNEXT, is under development. It adds several new features to the established APE architecture. Performance will be boosted towards the 10 Tflops range.  2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.