During the past 10 years the fields of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and massively parallel computing have been evolving rapidly. The authors study the attempts to make ANN algorithms run on massively parallel computers as well as designs of new parallel systems tuned for ANN computing. Following a brief survey of the most commonly used models, the different dimensions of parallelism in ANN computing are identified, and the possibilities for mapping onto the structures of different parallel architectures are analyzed. Different classes of parallel architectures used or designed for ANN are identified. Reported implementations are reviewed and discussed. It is concluded that the regularity of ANN computations suits SIMD architectures perfectly and that broadcast or ring communication can be very efficiently utilized. Bit-serial processing is very interesting for ANN, but hardware support for multiplication should be included. Future artificial neural systems for real-time applications will require flexible processing modules that can be put together to form MIMSIMD systems