A hypertree network is a network topology

Network topology

Network topology is the layout pattern of interconnections of the various elements of a computer or biological network....

 that shares some traits with the binary tree network. It is a variation of the fat tree

Fat tree

The fat tree network, invented by Charles E. Leiserson of MIT, is a universal network for provably efficient communication. Unlike an ordinary computer scientist's notion of a tree, which has "skinny" links all over, the links in a fat-tree become "fatter" as one moves up the tree towards the root...

 architecture.

A hypertree of degree k depth d may be visualized as a 3-dimensional object whose front view is the top-down complete k-ary tree

K-ary tree

In graph theory, a k-ary tree is a rooted tree in which each node has no more than k children. It is also sometimes known as a k-way tree, an N-ary tree, or an M-ary tree.A binary tree is the special case where k=2....

 of depth d and the side view is the bottom-up complete binary tree of depth d.

Hypertrees were proposed in 1981 by James R. Goodman

James R. Goodman

James Richard "Jim" Goodman is a professor of computer science at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand, and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.-Education and research:...

 and Carlo Sequin.

Hypertrees are a choice for parallel computer architecture

Computer architecture

In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....

, used, e.g., in the connection machine

Connection Machine

The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...

CM-5.