FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contacts: Ginny Babbitt (Silicon Graphics, Inc. - Media), 415-933-2527 Mardi Larson (Cray Research, Inc. - Media), 612-683-7133 SILICON GRAPHICS AND CRAY RESEARCH TARGET WORLD'S FIRST BINARY-COMPATIBLE 'DESKTOPS-TO-TERAFLOPS' PRODUCT FAMILY Market Leaders' Combined Expertise Will Accelerate Product Unification And Creation Of Premier Architecture For Visual Supercomputing MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (May 7, 1996) -- Supercomputing market leaders Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:SGI) and its subsidiary, Cray Research, Inc. (NYSE:CYR), today unveiled plans to create the world's first binary-compatible, "desktops-to-teraflops" product family, ranging from powerful desktop visual workstations to midrange supercomputers and high-end supercomputers able to perform trillions of calculations per second (teraflops). The company also announced significant enhancements to its current POWER CHALLENGE(tm) 10000, CRAY J90(tm) and CRAY T90(tm) product lines. The company's evolutionary strategy for technical high- performance computing (HPC) is based on unifying Silicon Graphics scalable systems based on CMOS RISC microprocessors and Cray vector supercomputers advancing toward a single scalable architecture, for the unified "desktops- to teraflops" family of visual supercomputing products. This architecture will employ leading-edge, cost-effective microprocessor technology from Silicon Graphics' subsidiary MIPS Technologies, combined with innovative hardware and software technologies from the company's Advanced Systems Division and Cray Research. "Fully compatible, cost-effective 'desktops-to-teraflops' visual computing is the key to leadership in the growing scientific and engineering markets," said Tom Jermoluk, Silicon Graphics president and chief operating officer. "As scientists and engineers demand ever increasing horsepower to solve their most complex computation tasks, Silicon Graphics, now combined with the engineering talents of Cray, will be uniquely poised to offer the most sophisticated capabilities for this demanding set of customers. Our combined expertise will enable us to accelerate our product unification and advancement toward a single architecture." Over the next four years, Silicon Graphics plans to advance along a comprehensive, market- and technology-focused roadmap that will become increasingly detailed over time. The plan begins immediately with unifying products on the software side, progressing from enhanced interoperability to source code compatibility, to eventual binary compatibility as Cray systems begin to leverage the MIPS microprocessor architecture. The convergence toward a common open systems software environment will combine the unique strengths of Silicon Graphics and Cray software, and will maintain and advance capabilities needed for high-end supercomputing customers. "Together, these two firms will make a combined company that is a powerhouse in the HPC industry, with offerings from the desktop to high-end supercomputers," said Jim Kasdorf, Westinghouse Energy Center, Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center. "Silicon Graphics and Cray will also expand the frontiers of visual supercomputing," Jermoluk said. "The real promise of the merger is the opportunity to combine Silicon Graphics' historic strengths in visualization and image generation with the very high-end computational capabilities of Cray. We will open new avenues to exploring very large data sets like those found in weather forecasting, oil exploration, simulations of large engineering projects, and a wide range of scientific endeavors." "I believe a new kind of computer is going to be born of this merger, a system capable of high-speed computation and high- speed graphics, all in one machine," added Larry Smarr, director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications. ADDITIONAL ANNOUNCEMENTS: ENHANCED VERSIONS OF CURRENT PRODUCTS The company's evolutionary strategy calls for current Silicon Graphics and Cray supercomputing products and enhancement plans to go forward to meet strong market demand, according to Bob Ewald, president of the Cray Research subsidiary. "We are in an enviable position, in that every one of our supercomputing products--the POWER CHALLENGE 10000, CRAY J90, CRAY T90 and CRAY T3E system--is the worldwide revenue-leader in its market category. We will not disturb that success or our customer relationships as we implement our strategy." Separately today, Silicon Graphics announced a 2 MB secondary cache memory system for the POWER CHALLENGE 10000 and a new entry price point of $49,900 for the POWER CHALLENGE R8000 systems to offer high-performance computing to an even broader spectrum of users. Also, the Cray subsidiary announced field-upgradable enhancements to the CRAY J90 and CRAY T90 lines that result in up to 40 percent performance gains, and plans for follow-on enhancements to these products. With the completion of the merger in June 1996, additional organization plans will be clarified including the combining of the sales and support teams and product engineering and manufacturing. Silicon Graphics currently owns 75 percent of Cray Research. This news release contains forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including the timely completion of research and development, the successful integration of Silicon Graphics and Cray Research, and other risks detailed from time to time in the SEC reports filed by Silicon Graphics and Cray Research, including the report on Form 10-Q filed by Silicon Graphics for the quarter ending March 31, 1996, and the report on Form 10-Q filed by Cray Research for the quarter ended March 31, 1996. Actual results may vary materially. Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of high- performance and commercial computing systems. The company delivers interactive three dimensional graphics, digital media and symmetric multiprocessing supercomputing technologies to technical and commercial environments through direct and indirect sales channels. Its subsidiary, MIPS Technologies, Inc. designs and licenses the industry's leading RISC processor technology for the computer systems, interactive consumer and embedded control markets. Cray Research provides the leading supercomputing tools and services to help solve customers' most challenging problems. Silicon Graphics, Inc. has offices worldwide and headquarters in Mountain View, California. -end- Silicon Graphics, the Silicon Graphics logo and CHALLENGE are registered trademarks, and POWER CHALLENGE is a trademark, of Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPS is a registered trademark, and R8000 is a trademark, of MIPS Technologies, Inc. Cray is a registered trademark, and CRAY J90, CRAY T90 and T3E are trademarks, of Cray Research, Inc. Press materials are available on the World Wide Web: Silicon Graphics: http://www.sgi.com Cray Research: http://www.cray.com