Cray/Media:	Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538

CRAY ANNOUNCES ENHANCED VERSIONS OF MARKET-LEADING CRAY T90 AND
CRAY J90 PARALLEL VECTOR SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEMS

Field Upgradable Enhancements Boost Performance By Up To 40 Percent, Protect Customer
Investments

EAGAN, Minn., May 7, 1996 -- Cray Research announced today significant field upgradable
enhancements to its market-leading CRAY T90 and CRAY J90 parallel vector supercomputer
lines and said it plans additional enhancements in the future.
	
³We are seeing growth and expanded use of our vector supercomputers,² according to Robert H.
Ewald, president of Cray Research.  ³Weıve nearly tripled our installed base since 1991,
capturing new customers in new industries.  Much of our growth is based on leading new
applications such as acoustical design for improved noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) in the
auto industry; process simulation and fluid mixing simulation in the chemical industry; and
metal forming simulation in general manufacturing.² 

According to Ewald, the CRAY T90 system is the leading supercomputing system in the high-
performance computing industry.  He said Cray reported an order backlog of nearly $200
million for this system at the end of 1995 with orders from worldwide automotive
manufacturers such as Ford, Chrysler, Electronic Data Systems (for General Motors R&D), Kia
Motors in Korea, and many Japanese auto firms; electronics powerhouse Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone; and national research centers and weather/climate organizations throughout the
world.  The CRAY J90 system, Ewald said, was the fastest market gainer in its technical
midrange category in 1995, nearly tripling its marketshare over 1994 from four percent to
nearly 12 percent.

³There are some things that canıt be done, period, without a high-end vector processor today,²
according to Jeff Liebl of Minneapolis-based analyst firm The Smaby Group.  ³Thatıs why Ford
is purchasing a high-end (CRAY) T90 system.   Thatıs why NTT is purchasing a high-end
(CRAY) T90 system.²

According to Ewald, all CRAY T90 and CRAY J90 enhancements announced today and planned for
the near-term are field upgradable to help customers preserve their investments.  

³These enhancements to our supercomputer product line further our leadership in the
marketplace and demonstrate our continued commitment to high-end technical computing and
our customers,² said Ewald.  ³You can expect field upgradable enhancements in the future that
continue to improve the CRAY T90 and CRAY J90 price/performance, provide a strong upgrade
path for Cray users and help our customers protect their hardware and software investments.²

The CRAY T90 Series system enhancements include a faster memory system that delivers three
and one-half times the bandwidth of current CRAY T90 system memory.  The new memory,
called CMO3, is expected to improve CRAY T90 total system speed by up to 40 percent, Cray
said.  The new memory offering will significantly aid in speeding memory-intensive workloads,
where problems have huge amounts of data associated with them, such as weather and climate
modeling and large-scale auto engineering and other industrial problems. 

Additional CRAY T90 system enhancements include a new processor option for IEEE floating
point compliance.  IEEE is a widely accepted industry standard and the IEEE option improves the
CRAY T90 systemıs compatibility with data on workstations and other systems, as well as its
ability to support the many third-party applications that have been ported to IEEE-compatible
systems. Customers can mix and match Cray-floating point processors and IEEE floating-point
processors in one system to tailor their solution.  

Cray also announced that both the CRAY T90 and CRAY J90 systems now support Crayıs
breakthrough scalable input/output (I/O) and networking technology, GigaRing, first launched
with the CRAY T3E scalable parallel system last November.  Crayıs intent with the GigaRing
technology was to design a flexible, cost-effective I/O system common for all Cray
supercomputers.  With this announcement today, the company has achieved this goal, Ewald said. 

The GigaRing has virtually unlimited capacity to store and move data into and out of systems
such as the CRAY T90 supercomputer at the industryıs fastest speed of up to 38.4
gigabytes/second.  The GigaRing can support up to quadrillions of bytes (petabytes) of disk
capacity.    For the CRAY J90 supercomputer, the flexible GigaRing I/O and networking
technology makes it easier to build Superclusters (clusters of supercomputers).  Because the
GigaRing is scalable and customers only buy what they need, those who plan to have multiple
Cray systems on their network have a flexible, cost effective, shared I/O system.  

CRAY J90 system enhancement highlights include the J90se, a new, faster processor, which
doubles the scalar speed of the CRAY J90 system and improves overall system performance on
vector-scalar codes up to 40 percent.  Customers can also mix and match the new processor
modules with current CRAY J90 modules, upgrading all or portions of their CRAY J90 system,
Cray said.  

The CRAY J90 system still remains the high-bandwidth computing leader in the technical
midrange for problems requiring the fastest memory and I/O speeds, Cray said.   

³Crayıs success in marketing the (CRAY) J90 has come in areas...in which codes do not use
cache well,² according to Jeffrey Mohr of RCI, Ltd., an analyst firm in Minneapolis.  ³The
question arises as to whether those codes could be restructured to provide good cache
performance.  The answer is, no way.²

Separately today, Silicon Graphics announced the combined Silicon Graphics/Cray product
strategy and roadmap, with evolutionary product unification culminating in a single scalable
architecture and software environment in the year-2000 timeframe.  Company officials said
Crayıs parallel vector products remain the workhorses for important classes of existing and
emerging applications in the automotive, aerospace, chemical, financial, government,
pharmaceutical, and weather/environment industries. 

"The future vision of our combined firm depends on maintaining Cray's leadership in high-end
supercomputing,² said Edward R. McCracken, chairman and chief executive officer of Silicon
Graphics, Inc.  ³We are fully committed to Cray's product plans on both the parallel vector and
highly scalable sides." 

All CRAY T90 and CRAY J90 enhancements are available immediately.   The CRAY J90 is Crayıs
air-cooled, low-cost vector supercomputer priced from $500,000.  The CRAY T90 system is
Crayıs high-end system priced from $2.5 million. 

Cray Research is a subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc. and provides the leading supercomputing
tools and services to help solve customers' most challenging problems.

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