  Quantum field theories underlie all of our understanding of the fundamental
forces of nature. The are relatively few first principles approaches to the
study of quantum field theories [such as quantum chromodynamics (QCD) relevant
to the strong interaction] away from the perturbative (i.e., weak-coupling)
regime. Currently the most common method is the use of Monte Carlo methods on a
hypercubic space-time lattice. These methods consume enormous computing power
for large lattices and it is essential that increasingly efficient algorithms
be developed to perform standard tasks in these lattice calculations. Here we
present a general algorithm for QCD that allows one to put any planar improved
gluonic lattice action onto a parallel computing architecture. High performance
masks for specific actions (including non-planar actions) are also presented.
These algorithms have been successfully employed by us in a variety of lattice
QCD calculations using improved lattice actions on a 128 node Thinking Machines
CM-5.
  {\underline{Keywords}}: quantum field theory; quantum chromodynamics;
improved actions; parallel computing algorithms.
