Cray/Media:        Mardi Larson, (612) 683-3538
Cray/Financial:    Bill Gacki, (612) 683-7372

CRAY RESEARCH NUMERICAL LIBRARY AVAILABLE FOR
SPARC SYSTEMS

LibSci Software Package Begins At $1,695 In U.S.

EAGAN, Minn., August 31, 1994 -- Cray Research, Inc. today
announced that the company's library of more than 1200
mathematical and scientific software subroutines is now
available for SPARC Solaris-based computer systems,
including workstation and server products from Sun
Microsystems and the CRAY SUPERSERVER 6400 (CS6400)
system from Cray Research's Oregon-based subsidiary.

The new product, called the CraySoft LibSci(tm) Numerical
Library, began shipping this month, according to Leary Gates,
director of the company's CraySoft unit, responsible for
development, marketing and sales of Cray Research software
for non-Cray platforms in the open systems market.  The
CraySoft LibSci product can be used on both single-processor
and parallel SPARC systems running Solaris 2.3, he said.  U.S.
pricing for a workstation begins at $1,695 for a paid-up
license; and $2,495 for a "performance pack" that also includes
the CraySoft Fortran 90 Programming Environment for SPARC
workstations and servers.

"Cray Research has been a leader in high-performance, parallel
processing since 1982," Gates said.  "With the CraySoft LibSci
product, users writing programs for SPARC Solaris systems
can dramatically improve performance of their application and
their programming efficiency by linking CraySoft LibSci
routines to their programs written in the Fortran 77, Fortran
90 or C languages.  Many routines within the LibSci product are
multithreaded and have been optimized to provide the highest
possible performance on single-processor and multi-processor
SPARC systems."  

"Parallel performance is driven by the efficient use of
processors and low parallel processing overheads," according
to Dr. Bodo Parady, staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
responsible for parallel performance on Sun workstations and
servers. "The LibSci routines address both of these issues by
using optimized kernels that take full advantage of the
underlying SuperSPARC capabilities of Solaris on the full range
of SPARC-compatible systems." 

Dr. Charles C. Mosher, Research Advisor with the Scientific
Computing Technology group of Atlantic Richfield Corporation
(ARCO), uses the LibSci product to achieve peak optimization
for several key applications operating on ARCO's newly
installed CS6400 system and other SPARC systems.  "At ARCO,
we use routines from the Cray Scientific Library to improve
the SPARC performance of seismic data processing
algorithms," according to Dr. Mosher.  "In many cases, kernel
computations speed up by factors of 2 or 3, which greatly
increases the throughput for those applications."

The CraySoft LibSci Numerical Library is a collection of
mathematical and scientific subroutines that help maximize
the performance of computer systems and speed the
development of software applications by providing "building
blocks" for the programmer.  By linking the library's
prepackaged subroutines directly into their applications,
programmers can avoid having to write complicated
subroutines from scratch.  This can greatly reduce
application development time, Gates said.

Gates said the new product includes routines to solve systems
of linear equations, Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs),
signal/image processing functions and sparse matrices,
eigenvalue problems, and matrix manipulations.  The key
components of the product include: BLAS (Level 1, 2, 3),
LAPACK, FFT and convolution routines, and random number
generation.

CraySoft products are available through Value Added Resellers
(VARs) and distributors, Cray Research sales offices
worldwide and Cray Research's new high-performance hotline,
1-800-BUY-CRAY, as well as e-mail at craysoft@cray.com. 
Information about Cray Research products is available on the
worldwide web at http://www.cray.com/.

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