Abstract In this paper we propose a new general purpose VLSI architecture called ring-connected trees (RCT) for parallel processing. RCT requires less hardware in terms of processing elements and connecting links compared to a mesh-of-tree of comparable size and its diameter is less than that of mesh. It requires less chip area, less maximum edge length and crossing number compared to those required by mesh-of-tree [1] [F.T. Leighton, Layout for the shuffle-exchange graph and lower bound techniques for VLSI, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Mathematics, MIT 1981] under the Grid model of Thompson [2] [C.D. Thompson, Area-time complexity for VLSI. Technical report, Division of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, January 1984]. By using spare PEs and links, RCT is made to tolerate multiple faults. Suitability of this architecture for multipurpose applications is demonstrated by designing parallel version of algorithms for a number of common computational problems. This structure requires linear and sublinear time for these algorithms and this is quite reasonable considering the simpler nature of the architecture.