Cray/Media:       Steve Conway 612-683-7133
Cray/Financial:   Bill Gacki 612-683-7372
Caltech:          Jay Aller 818-395-3631
JPL:              Frank O'Donnell 818-354-7170

SCIENTISTS PRAISE PERFORMANCE, RELIABILITY OF
CRAY RESEARCH MPP SYSTEM

EAGAN, Minn., May 26, 1994 -- Researchers using the new CRAY
T3D massively parallel processing (MPP) system have praised
its performance, reliability and software tools, Cray Research
reported today.

A 128-processor CRAY T3D system with peak performance of
19 billion calculations per second (gigaflops) was installed at
the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)/Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in January 1994.  The system provides closely
coupled MPP and parallel vector supercomputing capabilities in
one chassis. 

"We have been very impressed by the CRAY T3D's floating-
point speed and by the machine's stability and communication
performance," said Vincent McKoy, a professor of theoretical
chemistry at Caltech.  Colleagues Carl Winstead and Howard
Pritchard agree with McKoy that "the software tools provided
are equally impressive, especially the TotalView graphical
debugger and the MPP Apprentice performance analysis
package.  Having heterogeneous capabilities with a shared file
system has greatly simplified pre- and post-processing of our
parallel runs."

The Caltech scientists are conducting research aimed at
advancing U.S. capabilities in manufacturing sophisticated
microelectronics devices such as semiconductors.  They expect
to speed the development of these capabilities by using the
CRAY T3D system to simulate the microscopic collisions
between electrons and molecules that occur in plasma reactors
used for etching in microelectronics fabrication.  This
research will help manufacturers design improved etching
systems that result in better yields and increased
miniaturization. "Using the CRAY T3D system, we have already
successfully carried out calculations for a number of key
molecules under our contract with Sematech, Inc., the U.S.
industrial consortium pursuing next-generation
microelectronics capabilities," McKoy said.

Researchers at JPL are using the new system to produce 3-D
animations based on massive volumes of data obtained from
satellite and spacecraft mappings of the Earth and other
planetary surfaces.  According to David Curkendall, manager of
JPL's Advanced Laboratory for Parallel High-Performance
Applications Project, "the supercomputer functions like a real-
time flight simulator in which researchers take self-guided
flights over highly detailed, accurate 3-D landscapes to study
environmental, geographic and geological phenomena.  This will
help maximize the return on U.S. governmental investments in
the space program."  The JPL lab has completed a
demonstration 3-D flyover of the Mojave Desert and Death
Valley.

"Positive reports from valued customers like David Curkendall
at JPL and Vince McKoy, Carl Winstead and Howard Pritchard at
Caltech confirm that the CRAY T3D system is a powerful, user-
friendly MPP product," said Cray Research chairman and CEO
John F. Carlson.  Caltech/JPL (NASA) is a participant in Cray
Research's Parallel Applications Technology Program (PATP), a
broad initiative to develop MPP applications that includes the
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the Ecole Polytechnique
Federale de Lausanne (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology),
Carlson said. 

Acquisition of the CRAY T3D system is one of NASA's
responses to the national multi-agency High Performance
Computing and Communications (HPCC) program, which seeks
to advance U.S. capabilities in supercomputing.  The
Caltech/JPL project is funded by NASA's Office of
Aeronautics, Office of Space Science, and Office of Mission to
Planet Earth.

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

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