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

CRAY RESEARCH ANNOUNCES NEW DESKSIDE SIMULATION
SERVER

At $150,000 For 2 CPUs, New CRAY EL94 System Provides
Deskside Scalable Parallel Processing For More Than 600
Applications 

EAGAN, Minn., March 3, 1994 -- Cray Research Inc. (NYSE:CYR)
today announced the CRAY EL94 deskside computer system, its
next-generation deskside simulation server and the smallest,
lowest-priced system in Cray Research's supercomputer
product line.  The new system is available with two to four
central processing units (CPUs), beginning at $150,000. 

"For about the price of two high-end, uniprocessor
workstations, the smallest CRAY EL94 configuration offers a
balanced dual processing simulation platform that can be
scaled up to four processors," according to Derek Robb, Cray
Research vice president of marketing. 

The new CRAY EL94 system provides more than 500 megaflops
peak system performance, twice the peak system performance
of the previous deskside system at approximately the same
prices and same footprint size, according to Robb.  The new
CRAY EL94 systems are available immediately and provide
either 6 or 21 gigabytes of disk storage as part of the standard
configuration.

The CRAY EL94 system is based on the same technology as the
CRAY EL98 supercomputing system, Cray Research's
departmental supercomputer.  The new system is air-cooled,
operates on standard 50 Hz and 60 Hz power, and can easily be
installed by customers in office environments.   

"The CRAY EL94 is designed to extend Cray Research
compatibility to office environments at attractive prices,"
Robb said.

The CRAY EL94 system is available with up to 512 megabytes
of central memory and offers excellent single and parallel
application performance.  Robb noted that the CRAY EL94
system is binary compatible with the company's full
supercomputing product line.  The system runs the industry-
leading UNICOS operating system, which is UNIX-based, POSIX-
compliant and provides the same world-class UNIX operating
and development environment as on larger Cray systems. 

In addition, more than 600 commercial application software
packages that run on Cray Research's high-end systems are
available on the CRAY EL94 system.  "The CRAY EL94 system is
an attractive server for 2-D and 3-D simulation for complex
industrial problems," Robb noted. 
 
"With the CRAY EL94 system as the entry point into Cray
Research's compatible supercomputing product line, there is a
clear upgrade path to future departmental supercomputers,
large-scale parallel-vector systems, as well as the CRAY T3D
system, our MPP supercomputer," he said. 

The new deskside system has been developed for a wide
variety of user requirements from running large problems that
overflow workstation caches, to problems too large for
workstation resources or those that have large memory
requirements.  The CRAY EL94 system can also be used for
acting as a "network resource broker" by using Cray
Research's Network Queuing Environment software, an open
system-based batch processing and heterogeneous network
load balancer.  Additionally, the CRAY EL94 system provides a
low-cost application development and optimization platform
for larger Cray Research systems, including the CRAY T3D
massively parallel processing (MPP) system. 
 
Robb said the systems can also be ordered with the CRAY T3D
Emulator, a software tool that helps programmers using the
Cray Fortran 77 (CF77) programming environment to develop
and test applications for the CRAY T3D MPP system. 

Cray Research also announced today a program that will enable
colleges and universities worldwide to more easily acquire
this Cray Research technology.   Under the CRAY EL94 Academic
Program, the academic community can acquire a complete
system bundled with the Cray Fortran 90 (CF90), CF77 and Cray
Standard C and C++ programming environments at special
pricing, according to Chuck Swanson, manager of the Cray
Research Academic Program.  The program is designed to help
promote the growth of computational science education and
research at the undergraduate and graduate levels, with the
goal of increasing Cray's presence in academia where many
new applications and uses for supercomputing are discovered.  
To date, there are 98 Cray Research systems installed at
colleges and universities throughout the world. 

The CRAY EL94 system is the smallest system in the CRAY
EL90 series.  Since Cray began selling these series systems in
1990, the company has received 220 orders and attracted more
than 120 new-name customer for the systems.

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

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