A new approach to the calculation of the electronic structure of large
systems within the local density approximation is outlined. The elect
ronic structure problem is formulated using real space multiple scatte
ring theory. Employing a compute-node <-> atom equivalence, the method
has been implemented on a massively parallel processing supercomputer
. The method is naturally highly parallel and ideal order-N scaling is
obtained. The convergence of the method is demonstrated by comparison
with the result of conventional electronic structure calculation for
elemental metals and through calculation of the ordering energy of bet
a brass.