Since the emergence of VLSI, the relationship between the development of parallel algorithms and the design of special-purpose architecture has always been of major concern. The analysis of this relationship is the main topic of this book. Hardware and software issues closely depend upon one another and cannot be solved independently. Beyond the natural complexity of algorithm design, the designer has to face that of choosing the appropriate technology medium for its efficient realization. The dramatic developments in VLSI technology now offers extraordinary opportunities for implementing complex applications. As application specific/systems can offer 100 to 1000-fold improvements in cost/performance over general purpose computers on applications, they are attracting increasing attention in both academic and industrial communities. Highly specialized application-specific arrays of processors, which are the targeted architectures in this book, are extremely appealing. The papers in this volume give a thorough overview on current research in the areas of parallel algorithms, synthesis methods, VLSI architectures, and design tools.