Media:   Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538

CRAY RESEARCH IS FIRST TO ADOPT PVM INDUSTRY
STANDARD FOR OPEN SYSTEMS
 
Newest Cray PVM Products Support
Broader Uses of Distributed Computing

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 15, 1993 -- Cray Research, Inc. led the
industry in adopting the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) de
facto standard when it announced its first PVM product last
year.  Today, the company announced its newest PVM-based
products, which support a broader range of uses.   

The two new products, Cray Network PVM-3 and Cray MPP PVM-
3, incorporate Version 3 of the PVM de facto standard.  These
products allow Cray Research supercomputer users to: build
distributed programs using heterogeneous systems on a
network; develop interdisciplinary applications -- two or more
applications that simultaneously share information and
communicate with each other while in operation; and develop
massively parallel processing (MPP) applications based on the
message passing paradigm for the new CRAY T3D system, Cray
Research's first MPP system announced in Sept. of this year.   

PVM was developed by researchers at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and Emory University. 

"PVM is a key component in our open systems strategy," said
Irene Qualters, vice president of software for Cray Research. 
"We've supported PVM since early 1992 and have been
developing products based on PVM ever since.  These new
products we are announcing today are important tools for our
users to develop effective distributed applications programs."

Cray Research supercomputing systems are typically operated
in a heterogeneous computing environment.  They most often
reside on a network and are used for highly complex or large-
scale computational problems. 

The Cray Network PVM-3 product is flexible in its range of
potential uses and allows users to develop distributed
applications among Cray Research and other computing
systems on a heterogeneous network, among networked
clusters of Cray Research systems, between Cray Research's
new massively parallel processing (MPP) CRAY T3D system and
its host (CRAY Y-MP or CRAY C90 systems), or within one Cray
Research supercomputing system.

Distributing an application across several platforms allows
users to assign the most appropriate resource on a network to
each part of the application, said Qualters. 

Cray Network PVM-3 can also be used to develop
interdisciplinary applications -- independent applications that
can exchange data on the fly with other applications operating
either within the same system, or distributed on the same
network.   Qualters said that some climate researchers have
already used PVM to develop coupled oceanic and atmospheric
models that exchange data while in operation, producing more
accurate results faster than otherwise possible. 

Message passing is the most common method used today for
programming MPP systems.  The Cray MPP PVM-3 product is the
message passing software for the CRAY T3D system.  The
product delivers high-performance while providing a portable
non-proprietary programming interface.  The CRAY T3D
programming environments for Fortran and Standard C also
include the Cray PVM-3 message passing library, which allows
developers to build MPP applications using the same subroutine
names and calling sequences in PVM-3 to communicate
between processing elements (PEs) within the CRAY T3D
system.   The message passing paradigm is just one of three
paradigms for MPP programming; all three paradigms are
supported in the Cray Research CRAFT MPP Fortran
Programming Model, Qualters said. 

"By using the two PVM products together our users can exploit
the heterogeneous architecture of the CRAY T3D system,"
Qualters said. 

Qualters noted that PVM is the most portable, open industry
standard for distributed applications development available
today.  PVM operates on the most widely used computing
platforms including those from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and
Digital Equipment Corporation.   Other computer vendors have
followed Cray Research's lead and announced plans to make
PVM-based products available on their systems. 

"PVM is the de facto standard for distributed programming. 
Other options are proprietary and lack the flexibility provided
by PVM," Qualters said.  The PVM source code is publicly
available from Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a wide range
of computer systems.   

Parallel Virtual Machine, originally defined by the ability to
combine systems on a network to make a "virtual" computer
system, has broadened in its definition to include a variety of
distributed computing options. 

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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