Improved performance of QCD code on ALiCE

In a typical lattice QCD project the total runtime of code on a supercomputing platform is often measured in months or even years. This means that even a modest improvement in the performance of the code can yield very tangible benefits. There are two aspects to the optimisation of code for parallel machines: single-node optimisation and the minimisation of the overhead incurred by inter-node communications. The former requires that the code be written to take full advantage of the high performance available from todays advanced hardware, The latter is of particular importance on cluster machines, like ALiCE , where the scalability of code can be a serious problem.