NASA GODDARD ORDERS NEW, SMALLER VERSION OF
INDUSTRY-LEADING C90 SUPERCOMPUTER

EAGAN, Minn., March 24, 1993 -- The Space Data and
Computing Division of the NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center has ordered a CRAY C98 system, a new system
unveiled earlier this week by Cray Research, the company
announced today.  This system is the eight-processor model
in the expanded CRAY C90 series, which now includes
systems with one to 16 processors based on Cray
Research's industry-leading CRAY C90 technology, Cray
Research said.

Cray Research has five orders for the new downsized
system in the CRAY C90 series.  This is the second CRAY
C98 system order Cray Research has announced to date.

NASA Goddard's CRAY C98 system will be installed in the
second half of this year at the NASA Center for
Computational Sciences (NCCS) in Greenbelt, MD., which is
managed by Goddard's Space Data and Computing Division.
The new system will be used for Earth and space sciences
research involving global climate change studies, global
data assimilation, atmospheric/oceanic modeling,
geodynamic earth surface modeling, space physics theory
program, astrophysics, and Earth observing systems
simulation.   Terms of the order were not disclosed.

A principal application of the new supercomputer will be to
support the Data Assimilation Interdisciplinary Science
Team of the Earth Observing System (EOS) Program, a major
U.S. government initiative to better understand global
change.  The EOS program will produce vast quantities of
data about the Earth's environmental status from space-
borne instrument platforms, Earth probes, and ground-based
collection systems, at an anticipated data rate of one
terabyte (one trillion units of computer information) per
day.  NASA Goddard's new CRAY C98 system will be used by
the data assimilation team to optimally combine the EOS
observations with global circulation models in order to
provide a more accurate representation of the changes
occurring in the Earth system.

The new CRAY C98 system provides more than a four-fold
increase in processing power and four times the central
memory of the CRAY Y-MP system it will replace at the
NASA center.  "With 256 million words of central memory,
atmospheric modelers will be able to perform multi-year
data assimilation experiments with complex dynamical,
chemical, interactive global, atmospheric circulation
models requiring more than 100 million words of memory,
something they could not practically do today," said Dr.
Milton Halem, chief of the Space and Computing Division at
NASA Goddard.  "We could have attempted to run such higher
resolution problems on our existing CRAY Y-MP/8, but that
would have disabled our other users.  We currently support
more than 1,400 users, but with the new C98, we will be
able to take advantage of multi-tasking to tackle these
larger problems faster, while still providing the community
with the rapid, interactive turnaround they expect from
Cray Research systems."

"We are very pleased to provide NASA Goddard with its next-
generation Cray Research technology and to maintain the
strong relationship we've had throughout the past three
years," said John Carlson, Cray Research chairman and chief
executive officer.

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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