Quark propagator on the Connection Machine

The computation of the fermion propagator in lattice Quantum Chromodynamics requires the solution of a large system of linear equations. We discuss and compare the structure, implementation and performance of two linear equation solvers, the Jacobi algorithm and the Conjugate Gradient algorithm, on the Connection Machine CM-2. We investigate the computer time needed for next neighbor communication versus the time required for floating point operations on 8^4 and 16^4 lattices. We compare the convergence behavior of Conjugate Gradient and Jacobi as applied to gauge configurations at β = 0.0 and 6.0.