Media:     Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538
Financial: Bill Gacki, 612/683-7372

THE DOW CHEMICAL CO. AND CRAY RESEARCH COLLABORATE TO
ADVANCE SUPERCOMPUTER USE FOR CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
APPLICATIONS

Dow Acquires Access To Supercomputer As Part Of Deal

EAGAN, Minn., March 3, 1994 -- The Dow Chemical Company,
headquartered in Midland, Mich., has entered into a three-year
collaboration with Cray Research, Inc. (NYSE:CYR) to further
advance supercomputing for chemical process engineering,
Cray Research announced today.   As part of the agreement,
Dow will acquire access to a CRAY C92A supercomputer
scheduled for installation later this quarter at Cray Research's
computer facility here.   Additional terms were not disclosed. 

This is the second new chemical industry customer for Cray
Research and the third CRAY C90 system order from the
chemical industry in the past few months, Cray Research
officials said.   Dow will use the system mainly for chemical
engineering applications involving computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) and process simulation, two rapidly growing
supercomputer applications in the chemical industry.  Process
simulation is the use of supercomputers to simulate and
design or redesign production plants and to engineer more
effective processes for manufacturing bulk chemicals. 
Process simulation can also be effective in any of the process
industries such as food, pulp and paper, petrochemicals, and
plastics.  

According to Dr. Fred Corson, vice president of research and
development and member of the Dow board of directors, the
company plans to use the CRAY C92A system for chemical
process simulation to optimize full plant operations, CFD for
chemical mixing simulations in large stirred tanks, reactors,
and other unit operations commonly used to produce chemical-
based products, as well as for computational chemistry and
environmental modeling.   

"Our decision to enter into this agreement with Cray follows
our testing and extensive use of Cray Research supercomputers
at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA), Champaign, Ill., where we have been an industrial
partner since 1989," said Dr. Corson.  "Our use at NCSA showed
us that Cray Research provides the large memory resources
necessary to accurately simulate production processes. 
Timely solutions of these complex models is a key to reducing
our product development cycle.  We have also found Cray to be
a company that is committed to providing solutions in
partnership with its customers -- not just providing
hardware."

"We are very pleased to collaborate with Dow Chemical and to
see the company become a Cray Research customer," said John
F. Carlson, Cray Research chairman and chief executive officer. 
"In the past six or so years, we've seen many industrial firms
embrace supercomputing as a critical technology in meeting
their business goals.  We believe that Dow will do great things
with this high-performance computational tool and make
significant contributions to the chemical industry."

"We've sold several supercomputers to the chemical and
pharmaceutical industries in the past three years largely
based on computational chemistry applications," Carlson
continued.  "We've been working diligently since about 1990 to
demonstrate to these industries the value of chemical
engineering applications such as CFD, chemical process
simulation, plastic injection molding, and other manufacturing-
oriented applications, and this Dow collaborative arrangement
will assist our efforts."    

The CRAY C92A supercomputer will be installed at Cray
Research's facility to make use of the company's expertise in
managing multi-user supercomputers.  As part of the
agreement, a portion of the system will be dedicated to joint
advanced research in chemical engineering.  The remainder of
the system will be devoted to Dow's chemists and engineers
throughout the world who will have continuous round-the-
clock access to the system through high-speed networks.  This
is the second time Cray Research has operated a
supercomputer for one of its customers.  Last year the
company housed a system for the University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) until
the completion of ARSC's new supercomputer center.   

Cray Research has more than 500 supercomputing systems
installed worldwide, of which there are 17 used for chemical,
materials and pharmaceutical applications.   


Cray Research creates the most powerful, highest-quality
computational tools for solving the world's most challenging
scientific and industrial problems. 

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