We describe a scalable architecture for general-purpose quantum computation based on trapped ions and photonic interconnect network. The quantum computer is made up of several elementary logic units (ELUs) each containing a modest number of trapped ions representing physical qubits. Each ELU is provided with an optical communication port through which a photon entangled with a communication ion is extracted. Quantum entanglement is distributed between an arbitrary pair of ELUs through a reconfigurable photonic network, which can be utilized to perform two-qubit quantum logic operation between any pair of physical qubits in the entire quantum computer. We show that this architecture can support universal, fault-tolerant quantum computation. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.