Media: Mardi Schmieder, 612/683-3538 Financial: Laura Merriam 612/683-7395 CRAY RESEARCH, MOLDFLOW PARTNER TO ACCELERATE SUPERCOMPUTER SIMULATION ACCEPTANCE FOR PLASTICS INDUSTRY EAGAN, Minn., and KILSYTH, Australia, April 8, 1993 -- Cray Research, Inc. and Moldflow, Pty, Ltd., today announced a partnership project to advance supercomputing capabilities for the plastics injection molding process widely used in the plastics industry. This project is important, the companies said, because ultra-fast computing capability for this application would allow industry to more quickly bring better plastic components and products to market. As part of the project, Moldflow, developer of the popular Moldflow suite of plastic injection simulation software, has acquired and installed a CRAY Y-MP EL entry-level supercomputing system. The Moldflow suite includes software modules that accurately model and optimize the plastics injection molding process and the effects of this process on the final molded product. Moldflow software analyzes polymer flow within the mold, the effects of mold cooling on flow, and the resultant shrinkage and warpage of the product. Moldflow will use the CRAY Y-MP EL system to boost the software's performance on Cray Research's full line of supercomputing systems, including a targeted 10- fold performance gain in plastics shrinkage and warpage analysis. The partnership also calls for converting the Moldflow software for use on Cray Research's CRAY T3D system, the company's first-phase MPP system due out later this year. In addition, Moldflow plans to do next-generation software development on the CRAY Y-MP EL system to add capabilities for fiber orientation and process optimization, which are highly compute intensive analyses. Other terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Moldflow software has been available on workstation platforms since 1987, and more recently has been available on Cray Research supercomputers, according to Hugh Henderson, chief executive officer of Moldflow. The Cray Research version of Moldflow contains unique features that take advantage of the supercomputer's capabilities. The high speed of the Cray Research supercomputer enables plastics engineers to simulate a wide range of production scenarios in minutes, compared with hours on a workstation, he said. This is important to meet the increasing demands in today's manufacturing schedules. The supercomputer version of the Moldflow suite has been attractive to firms that use injection molded components in their products, particularly those in the automotive, consumer electronics and medical industries, according to Mike Obermier, Cray Research's on-staff plastics engineer. These industries invest heavily in expensive steel molds required to produce high volumes of finished products or components used in sub-assemblies, he said. "Combining Moldflow predictive software with Cray Research high-speed supercomputers has practical benefits for industry," said Obermier. "We are very excited about this partnership and the opportunity for our cooperative efforts to help industry make effective use of this powerful new computational tool." Currently, there are several licenses for the Cray Research version of Moldflow from organizations such as Apple Computer, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology in South Korea, and Ohio State University. Apple used Moldflow on its CRAY Y-MP system to analyze nearly all molded components of the popular PowerBook and the PowerBook Duo laptop computers prior to committing huge sums of money for tooling. The simulation also saved tooling engineers time by eliminating the need for the typical seven or eight tooling tryouts. "Moldflow software on our Cray Research system enabled us to produce an extremely high-quality product and bring the PowerBook Duo computer series to market more quickly," said Brian Guinn, Moldflow engineer for Apple Computer. Recently, South Korean automotive manufacturer Kia Motors worked with Cray Research's Obermier to optimize the manufacture of an engine intake manifold plastic component. High-speed polymer injection was causing core shift and blocking the flow of plastic inside the mold. The speed of Moldflow on the CRAY Y-MP supercomputer enabled the Kia engineering team to simulate six production scenarios in one week (about 65 computer hours). Each simulated scenario included the full range of processes from injection flow to warpage analysis. Production was optimized by repositioning the injection point to allow the polymer to fill more easily. According to Dr. Myong-Won Suh, manager of Kia's computing service department, "Engineering intuition and experience would have solved the problem, but more slowly. The simulation helped our engineers to confirm their intuition. And many experts in plastic injection molding were surprised to see our results." According to Henderson, "Moldflow on the Cray has been a very successful product for us, and we expect that combining our leading edge technologies to enhance this product further will have considerable benefits to industry. "Real time' Moldflow analysis gives users the capability to simulate and refine multiple production runs on the computer screen," he continued. "Optimization of product and mold design is accelerated and the production process is streamlined before mold building even starts. Significant cost savings results from improved product quality, reduced manufacturing costs, less prototyping and quicker time to market." Moldflow is the world leader in plastics analysis technology. Used at more than 1,000 sites worldwide, Moldflow technology supplies decision making tools to the plastics industry, enabling users to design better plastic products that are manufactured in a more effective way. Cray Research creates the most powerful, highest-quality computational tools for solving the world's most challenging scientific and industrial problems. ###