Cray/Media:      Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538
Cray/Financial:  Brad Allen, 612/683-7395
Medtronic/Media: Dick Reid, 612/574-3052

CRAY RESEARCH ANNOUNCES FIRST SUPERCOMPUTER
ORDER FROM MEDTRONIC

First Cray System in Biomedical Industry To Be Used
In Medical Device Development, Manufacturing

EAGAN, Minn., May 16, 1995 -- Cray Research, Inc. (NYSE: CYR)
announced today that Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT) has ordered
its first supercomputer from Cray Research.  The order is for a
CRAY J916 supercomputer, which is scheduled for installation
this summer at Medtronic's Center for Biomaterial Research,
Minneapolis.  This Cray system model is priced ranging from
$225,000 to about $1 million (U.S. list), Cray officials said.  
Terms were not disclosed. 

According to Paul Citron, vice president for Science and
Technology at Medtronic, the CRAY J916 supercomputer was
competitively selected to do complex computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) and structural analysis simulations to develop
new cardiovascular medical devices.  The primary applications
software packages Medtronic R&D specialists plan to run on the
CRAY J916 system are FIDAP from Fluid Dynamics
International, MARC from MARC Analysis Research Corporation,
and HEXAR software from Cray Research. 

FIDAP is a popular CFD application used by automotive,
aerospace and other engineers to simulate fluid (air, water)
flow around and within automobiles, airplanes, boats, and other
related components for improved product design.  This same
software will be applied to simulations related to the
development of Medtronic's new products. 

The HEXAR software runs only on Cray Research
supercomputers and is designed to save product developers
months of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars by
automatically creating three-dimensional computer models
from raw CAD (computer-aided design) data in minutes. 
Traditionally, it has taken months to hand-craft models, or
meshes, needed for computer analysis for product designs,
medical phenomena and other complex research.  The HEXAR
software is unique among other mesh generators on the market
today because it creates a "hexahedral mesh," a mesh
composed of six-sided bricks.  These meshes are favored for
medical applications, where creating computer models of
complex organic shapes for biomedical research has been
difficult and time-consuming.  

"We decided on the CRAY J916 solution not only because Cray
Research makes dependable, high-performing hardware, but the
full solution that Cray was able to provide us with HEXAR,
FIDAP and MARC was beyond the competing vendors," Citron
said.  "This Cray solution is exactly what we needed to solve
our complex computational problems associated with new
product designs."

"Winning a leading medical products customer like Medtronic is
one more example of how Cray Research is successfully moving
our systems into new growth markets," said Robert H. Ewald,
Cray Research president and chief operating officer.  "The
CRAY J90 systems are the fastest-selling products in Cray's
history.  We've won more than 130 customers with this new
low-cost line of supercomputers -- more than one-third are
new customers, many operating in new industries for Cray."

Medtronic, Minneapolis, provides products and services used by
cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons to treat and improve
the quality of life for people with heart and/or circulatory
systems disorders.  About half of all the pacemakers in the
world are manufactured by Medtronic and more than 2 million
of the company's pacemakers have been implanted since 1961.  
Other key products and services include: tachyarrhythmia
management systems, implantable neurological pain
management systems, prosthetic and bioprosthetic heart
valves, angioplasty catheters, implantable drug administration
systems, surgical instruments and accessories,
autotransfusion equipment and disposable devices for handling
and monitoring blood during major surgery. 

Cray Research provides the leading supercomputing tools and
services to help solve customers' most challenging problems. 

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