Media:Mardi Schmieder, 612/683-3538



CRAY RESEARCH ENGINEERING GRAPHICS SOFTWARE 

TO RUN ON DIGITAL'S ALPHA WORKSTATION



ATLANTA, Ga., June 7, 1993 -- At the 1993 Digital Equipment Corporation User Society

(DECUS) meeting held here this week, Cray Research, Inc. is demonstrating initial capability of

its popular MPGS engineering post-processing software package on the Digital/Kubota Alpha

AXP/Denali graphics workstation.   The company also announced plans to make the next release

of MPGS (MPGS 5.0) commercially available on the new Alpha AXP/Denali family of

workstations, as well as on other UNIX-based graphics workstations, by the end of this year.   



MPGS is Cray Research's popular engineering post-processing package designed specifically to

support the analysis, interpretation, and visualization of supercomputer problems.  The 

software exploits distributed computing, which combines the strengths of supercomputers and

graphics workstations to solve problems.  MPGS software utilizes the supercomputer for

compute-intensive calculations and the workstation for 3-D graphic transformations and image

rendering.    



The Alpha AXP/Denali graphics workstation family combines DEC 3000 AXP workstations with

Kubota Pacific Computer's Denali 3-D graphics and imaging subsystem.   According to Digital

officials, Alpha AXP/Denali workstations are jointly marketed by Digital and Kubota.  



MPGS is currently offered through Cray Research on its full supercomputer product line using

IBM's RS 6000 and Silicon Graphics, Inc. workstations for graphics rendering.   More than 70

Cray Research customer sites currently use the MPGS package.   Distribution of MPGS for the

additional planned UNIX workstation platforms will also be through Cray Research, company

officials said.



"Distributed computing, which is becoming increasingly more common, allows users to take

advantage of what each computer in a network does best,"  said Sara Graffunder, director of

applications at Cray Research.  This method, she noted, enhances work productivity because

while the large-scale calculations are being performed on the supercomputer, users can work

with and examine their results in 3-D visual form on their workstation screen. 



MPGS supports dozens of the most commonly used engineering analysis packages for structural

analysis and computational fluid dynamics including MSC/NASTRAN, LS-DYNA3D, FLUENT,

FIDAP, and STAR-CD, Graffunder said.  She noted that nearly every automotive company

worldwide uses MPGS for car design, engineering and manufacturing problems.  Additional

MPGS users include several worldwide aerospace companies, research labs, universities and

even a construction company, which uses the software package to post-process and visualize

engineering problems involving airflow within and around skyscrapers in downtown Tokyo.



"MPGS has been a successful Cray Research product," she said.  "With this demonstrated

capability on Digital's Alpha AXP workstation and planned support of other UNIX-based

workstations, we will be able to bring the industry-leading MPGS engineering post-processing

environment to more users." 



"MPGS provides very high-end post-processing capability for our Cray/LS-DYNA3D

customers," said Bence Gerber, vice president of sales and marketing for Livermore Software

Technology, the developers of LS-DYNA3D.  "Based on our recent experiences with Alpha AXP

and our excellent relationship with Cray Research, MPGS on Alpha AXP with Kubota's high-end

3-D graphics capability will be a real winner for our customers."



"Partnering with Cray Research and Kubota will help deliver leading high-performance

computing solutions to the technical computing community," said Kevin McCoole, marketing

manager of Digital's High-Performance Computing Group.  "We are very excited that both Cray

and Kubota will offer complementary capabilities for our Alpha AXP workstation family. 

Together, we can offer the state-of-the-art in supercomputing, workstation and graphics power

to today's broadening high-performance computing user base." 



Post-processing software packages allow users to take supercomputer simulation results and

create easy-to-interpret visual images.  



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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