A computer system having low memory access latency. In one embodiment, the computer system includes a network and one or more processing nodes connected via the network, wherein each processing node includes a plurality of processors and a shared memory connected to each of the processors. The shared memory includes a cache. Each processor includes a scalar processing unit, a vector processing unit and means for operating the scalar processing unit independently of the vector processing unit. Processors on one node can load data directly from and store data directly to shared memory on another processing node via the network.