Given N matrices A1, A2, …,A(subscript N) of size N×N, the matrix chain product problem is to compute A1×A2×...×A(subscript N). Given an N×N matrix A, the matrix powers problem is to calculate the first N powers of A, i.e., A, A^2, A^3, …, A(superscript N). We show that the two problems can be solved in (The equation in abbreviated.) and (The equation in abbreviated.) times respectively, where a< 2.3755, and p, the number of processors, can be arbitrarily chosen in the interval [l..N(superscript (a+1)] Our highly scalable algorithms can be implemented on a linear array with a reconfigurable pipelined bus system, which is a distributed memory system using optical interconnections.