Abslract.The design of a special purpose computer to operate in parallel with a general purpose computer to accelerate the diagonalization of real symmetric matrices is described.The entire system operates in a configuration described as the "Fixed-Plus-Variable" Structure Computer [1] such that the same elements used for the special computer may be reorganized for other problem applications.As a vehicle for this study it is assumed that problem properties dictated the choice of Jacobi's method.The Jaeobi method of diagonalization ~md an available program utilizing an improved technique for its execution on existing computers are described.The bases of decisions leading to design of the special purpose computer are explained.The nature of the supervisory control, which coordinates the activities of the general and speeiM purpose computers is detailed.The predicted in~ creases in speed due to the organization and parallelism and then with the superimposed effect of higher speed circuitry are evaluated.(~2 G. ESTRIN AND C. R, VISWANATHANst, raing of the awfilable inventory, the variable-stlructurc~ par~, of the system is used to shorten the overall computation time associated with any given problem.The eigenvalue problem, which arises in a variety of fields, viz.theory of vibrations, atomic and molecular spectroscopy, crystalline physics, nuclear physics, etc., [3] may be formulated as follows.Let H be an % X n matrix whose elements are real and symmetric.The problem is (o find a mmaber X and arl n-dimensional vector M such that

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