Media: Mardi Larson, at UniForum March 23 - 25 (booth #3021) After UniForum, 612/683-3538, Steve Conway 612-683-7133 Financial: Bill Gacki, 612/683-7372 CRAY RESEARCH ANNOUNCES LATEST ADVANCE IN "COMMERCIAL-STRENGTH" UNIX SOFTWARE Firm's UNIX Operating Systems, CraySoft Products Have Critical Features For Data Center, Commercial World SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 23, 1994 -- Supercomputer market leader Cray Research today announced its latest advance in "commercial-strength" UNIX-based software, the UNICOS 8.0 operating system. This week at the UniForum conference and exhibition held here, Cray Research is showcasing the robust capabilities of UNICOS 8.0, as well as CraySoft software -- Cray Research software engineered for personal computers (PCs), workstations and servers -- and the firm's high-performance Solaris-based operating system. UNICOS 8.0 is available on Cray Research's full supercomputing product line, which today begins as low as $150,000. New UNICOS 8.0 features include enhanced scalable parallel processing, security and availability enhancements and, for the first time, centralized resource management facilities -- software features important today to the commercial marketplace, according to Irene Qualters, Cray Research senior vice president of software. In the area of security, for example, Cray Research has become the sole supercomputer vendor and only the second major computer vendor to receive a U.S. Department of Defense B1 "Trusted Network" security rating, which means a Cray Research supercomputer can operate in a heterogeneous networked environment and still maintain its evaluated rating. "This is a stringent requirement and achieving this designation shows how effective our security software really is," according to Qualters. "Data security is becoming more important to all computer users, especially with the increased use of distributed computing." A particular configuration of UNICOS 8.0 software called Trusted UNICOS is the product under evaluation by the U.S. DoD. Trusted UNICOS security enhancements go far beyond standard UNIX features such as user, group and world permission to effectively protect mission-critical data against accidental or malicious access or corruption. The UNICOS 8.0 product, the eighth release of the product first made available in 1984, is bundled with Cray Research systems. In addition to enhanced features for batch management, tape management and volume tape management, and scheduling and accounting, which have long been available in UNICOS, the new version has kernel multi-threading capabilities for improved scalable parallel processing, Qualters said. "Cray Research delivers high-usage systems for ultra-fast computations, as well as for storing and managing mission- critical data," she said. These systems traditionally reside on a network with other manufacturers' devices. Hundreds of users may access a single supercomputer from networked workstations and PCs, often using a client/server model, she said. "Cray Research supercomputers communicate with all the devices on the network, so we've made it transparent for users to access this high-performance resource," she said. "Because of this demanding operating environment, we've had to advance the reliability, performance and functionality of UNIX." Cray Research has also leveraged its 10 years of UNIX experience by building many UNICOS features into the company's high-performance Solaris-based operating system for the symmetric multiprocessing CRAY SUPERSERVER 6400 (CS6400) system. UNICOS also serves as the agent for the new CRAY T3D massively parallel processing (MPP) system, which provides the same commercial strength operating environment for the MPP user. The CRAY T3D runs UNICOS MAX, a UNICOS- based microkernel operating system. CraySoft, formed in Oct. of 1993, is demonstrating its first product, Network Queuing Environment (NQE) software, on a number of workstation platforms. The NQE product is a sophisticated batch processing software tool based on industry standard Network Queuing System (NQS) and first designed for the Cray Research supercomputing environment. NQE software allows workloads to be automatically balanced across a variety of heterogeneous computer systems. "Cray Research is widely recognized in scientific and technical computing as the leader in high-performance, open software products and technologies," said Qualters. "Our aim with CraySoft is to bring our technology to a broader user base. In addition, we've expanded our hardware product offering for the commercial world to include departmental supercomputing systems starting at $150,000, MPP systems, and symmetric multiprocessing systems with our new CS6400 Superserver system, all of which run robust UNIX software." Cray Research, founded in 1972, originally had government and academic customers only. Today, commercial customers make up 30 percent of the company's customer base, according to Qualters. With its broadened product line, Cray Research expects the commercial market to grow to 40 percent of its customer base in the next year or two, she said. Cray Research supercomputers long have been high-usage, high- valued resources that have strong visibility in the data center, according to Kathy Nottingham, Cray Research software product manager. The company's products are poised to take on the tough software requirements of the commercial marketplace, she said. "Cray Research embraced UNIX for its operating system well before most PC and workstation companies, and before any other supercomputer manufacturer," Nottingham said. "This calculated risk is paying dividends as we move aggressively into the commercial world." Nottingham said that as commercial organizations rightsize and move from the closed environment of expensive mainframes to less expensive UNIX-based systems, they are finding software that lacks the "mainframe" features organizations need to operate efficiently. According to The Client-Server Study (Faulkner Information Services), which surveyed 250 Information Services (IS) and communications professionals charged with implementing client-server technology in their organizations, UNIX has the following major weaknesses: inadequate security, backup procedures, usage accounting, workload management, printer management, and problem management. "We have high-performance software solutions to address each and every weak areas cited by the commercial community," Nottingham said. Cray Research Superservers (CRS) is Cray Research's subsidiary that produces the CS6400 system, a 64-way SPARC/Solaris-compliant Superserver system aimed primarily at commercial database applications. Cray Research creates the most powerful, highest-quality computational tools for solving the world's most challenging scientific and industrial problems. ###