Abstract: A data-flow architecture and software environment for high-performance signal and data procesing. The programming environment allows applications coding in a functional high-level language 20 which a compiler 30 converts to a data-flow graph form 40 which a global allocator 50 then automatically partitions and distributes to multiple processing elements 80, or in the case of smaller problems, coding in a data-flow graph assembly language so that an assembler 15 operates directly on an input data-flow graph file 13 and produces an output which is then sent to a local allocator 17 for partitioning and distribution. In the former case a data-flow processor description file 45 is read into the global allocator 50, and in the latter case a data-flow processor description file 14 is read into the assembler 15. The data-flow processor 70 consists of multiple processing elements 80 connected in a three-dimensional bussed packet routing network.