Cray/Media: Mardi Larson 612-683-3538 Cray/Financial: Brad Allen 612-683-7395 MIDDLE EAST SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER ORDERS CRAY RESEARCH SUPERCOMPUTER EAGAN, Minn., Jan. 18, 1995 -- The Middle East Supercomputing Center (MESCC), Manama, Bahrain, has ordered a CRAY J916 system, the company's latest compact supercomputer, Cray Research, Inc. (NYSE:CYR), announced today. MESCC provides Cray Research supercomputing resources to customers on a service bureau basis. In a cooperative effort with the Bahrain Center for Studies and Research (BCSR), Awali, and Bahrain-based Gulf PetroLink (GPL), MESCC will market its supercomputing services to international companies in petroleum, environmental, financial and meteorological industries. An interim CRAY EL98 supercomputer installed at BCSR in November 1994 will be used until the CRAY J90 system arrives later this year. According to H.E. Yosuf A. Al-Shirawi, Minister of Development and Industry and leader in MESCC's development, companies can utilize MESCC resources to perform supercomputing tasks without having to invest in acquiring and maintaining their own system. "The Cray Research compact supercomputer enables us to provide a cost-effective supercomputing resource to our customers," said Al-Shirawi. The Cray Research supercomputer will be used for seismic processing, reservoir simulation, ground water studies, weather forecasting and economic modeling. The Cray system will be networked to a seismic contractor processing support center, a Geographical Information System (GIS) work group, and workstations located at universities and research facilities. In addition to providing access to high performance computational resources, the CRAY J90 system will be used to provide services including data conversion, tape transcription, secure on-site tape archiving, on-line secure data archiving, GIS database development and customized services to customers needs. "The delivery of this system to MESCC extends the reach of Cray Research to new customers in a variety of industries," said Robert Ewald, Cray Research president and chief operating officer. "Our air-cooled, compact supercomputers have been instrumental in opening new opportunities for us." Introduced in September last year, the CRAY J916 is a low- cost, compact supercomputer designed to operate as a powerful simulation server for problems that may overwhelm the capabilities of workstations. Cray reports more than 80 orders for the CRAY J90 systems, which begin shipping next month. Cray Research provides the leading supercomputing tools and services to help solve customers' most challenging problems. ###