U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/WES
Billy C. Bridges, 601/634-2504
RELEASE:  14-93

Cray Research, Inc.
Steve Conway, 612/683-7133


HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING CENTER

With the signing of a $40 million contract on April 21, the
U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES), in
Vicksburg, Miss., became the first Department of Defense High
Performance Computing Center, and one of the world's leading
computer centers.

The contract with Cray Research for the CRAY C90 supercomputer
will give WES one of the largest and most powerful scientific
computing systems in the world.  When coupled with WES's
existing CRAY Y-MP supercomputer, these systems will provide a
computational capability of 19 billion mathematical
calculations per second with enough capacity to store 10
trillion characters of on-line information.

The new system will be located in the WES Information
Technology Laboratory.  It will be fully operational this fall.

The WES facility is part of the Department of Defense High
Performance Computing Modernization Plan.  The plan's purpose
is to establish the rationale, process, timetable and funding
requirements for high performance computing in defense
research, development, testing, and evaluation.

High performance computing centers and communication are
essential base technologies that will drive or limit the
conduct of virtually all science and engineering in the future. 
The current demand for high performance computing exceeds what
is now available from the most powerful systems within the
defense department.

The WES High Performance Computing Center will be linked with
high-speed communications networks, which are also being
developed as part of the modernization plan.  The Center will
serve Army, Navy, Air Force, and other defense agency
researchers throughout the United States.

Some of the specific WES computer applications include: 
chemistry and materials science, ocean acoustics, prediction of
dispersion of hazardous materials, computational dynamics of
aircraft and their ordnance, and the survivability of hardened
structures under blast effects.

The first digital computer in the state of Mississippi, an IBM
650, was placed at WES in 1957.  The new CRAY C90 will occupy
approximately the same amount of space as the IBM 650 but will
be 120 million times faster.

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