A controller based hardware device includes a controller node for each of a plurality of hardware elements, and a control instruction decoder. The control instruction decoder is arranged for receiving control data for a specific one of the hardware elements and communicating that control data to the associated hardware element. The control data includes at least one control vector, which includes at least one command line and an indication of the scheduling of the command lines. The command line includes at least one operation which may be executed in parallel on the controller based hardware. The operation includes a description of data flow between selected one of the hardware elements.