SUBJECT: CRAY COMPUTER CORP. AWARDED DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT FOR CRAY-3/SUPER SCALABLE SYSTEM COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire/ via INDIVIDUAL, Inc. -- Cray Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: CRAY) and the National Security Agency (NSA) have entered into a joint development contract, valued at up to $9.2 million, to produce a CRAY-3/Super Scalable System (SSS). The CRAY-3/SSS will be a hybrid high performance system that will offer vector parallel processing, scalable parallel processing and the combination of both. Under the terms of the contract, Cray Computer Corp. will be paid up to $4.2 million for development costs, and the Government will provide approximately $400,000 in software consulting services. The company is responsible for the balance of the development costs. In addition, the company will have rights to use certain Government technologies. George Cotter, chief scientist for the NSA stated, "NSA selected Cray Computer Corp. to develop the CRAY-3/Super Scalable System because of its advanced technologies and the CRAY-3 architecture. This is an important initiative of the Federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program." Chuck Breckenridge, executive vice president for Cray Computer Corp., noted, "The CRAY-3/SSS will provide unparalleled performance for many promising applications. We are pleased to participate in this transfer of Government technology and we are eager to help potential customers explore and develop appropriate applications." This development project is based on a September 1993 feasibility study recommending a hybrid supercomputer composed of a CRAY-3 and a large number of Processor-In-Memory (PIM) chips, developed by the Supercomputing Research Center (SRC: Institute for Defense Analyses). The SRC will provide significant technical assistance in both the software and hardware aspects of the system. The Government's technology transfer program is intended to maintain the country's technology leadership position by providing a cost sharing arrangementfor development and commercialization of advanced Government technologies. The high performance system will consist of a dual processor 256 million word CRAY-3 and a 512,000 processor 128 million byte Single Instruction- Multiple Data (SIMD) array. This CRAY-3/Super Scalable System will provide high-performance vector parallel processing, scalable parallel processing and the combination of both in a hybrid mode featuring extremely high bandwidth between the PIM processor array and the CRAY-3. SIMD arrays of 1 million processors are expected to be available using the current version of the PIM chip once this development project is completed. The scalable array will connect to the CRAY-3 memory interface and will be addressable as standard memory to facilitate use of the SIMD array with minimal delays for data transfer. The PIM chip, containing 64 single bit processors and 128K bits of memory, was developed by the Supercomputing Research Center for NSA, and tested on a Sun/SPARC workstation with a parallel version of the C language. Cray Computer Corp. will package PIM chips utilizing its advanced multiple chip module (MCM) packaging technology that allows the CRAY-3 to operate with a record breaking 2.08 nanosecond clock rate. The PIM chips are manufactured by National Semiconductor Corp. The CRAY-3/SSS is expected to be demonstrated in the first quarter of 1995. After this initial demonstration, interested parties will be invited to try out other applications. The CRAY-3 memory interface bandwidth will allow the application specific SIMD array to provide dramatic performance improvements over existing architectures for bit and image processing, pattern recognition, signal processing, and sophisticated graphics applications. A notable strength of the SIMD processor array is variable precision floating point for those frequently occurring applications requiring less (and sometimes more) than the standard 64 bit IEEE floating point arithmetic. A substantial applications base is available for the CRAY-3 and Cray Computer Corp. is committed to working closely with customers to develop traditional high performance vector and scalable applications. For suitable applications, the SIMD processor array option offers up to 32 Trillion Bit Operations per Second and provides price/performance unavailable today on any other high performance platform. The CRAY-3 system with the SSS option will be offered as an application specific product and will be well positioned in the evolving supercomputer marketplace. Seymour Cray stated that, "The CRAY-3/SSS development project leverages the Company's existing technologies and accelerates our program to develop parallel architectures and software to reach the TeraFLOPS performance level. I see a strong SIMD architectural component as crucial to a complete parallel supercomputer capability." Cray Computer Corp. is engaged in the design, development, manufacture and marketing of CRAY-3, CRAY-3/SSS, and CRAY-4 supercomputer systems. /CONTACT: Terry Willkom, president, or William Skolout, CFO, 719-679- 6464, both of Cray Computer; or Mary Ann Phillips, director of Corporate Communications, of National Semiconductor, 408-721-2646/ (CRAY)