CRAY INC. SUPERCOMPUTERS ARE LARGEST AND FASTEST AMONG LEADING VENDORS ON WORLD'S "TOP500 SUPERCOMPUTERS" LIST.

Cray Inc. (Nasdaq:CRAY) has said that its supercomputers were the largest and fastest among leading vendors' systems in the latest independent list of the world's "Top500 Supercomputer Sites." In addition to averaging 34 percent faster than the closest major competitor in this theoretical speed test, the company's Cray T3E supercomputer continues to hold the world record for actual computer speed.

Cray said its average listed system included 509 processors and had a theoretical speed of 315.8 billion calculations per second, or gigaflops. The latter figure was 34 percent faster than closest major competitor Compaq (235.8 gigaflops), 37 percent faster than the average IBM system (230.1 gigaflops) and 79 percent faster than the average SGI system (176.7 gigaflops). Aggregate theoretical computing power for the 45 Cray systems was second highest among all vendors at 14.2 trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

The company's results were driven by the Cray T3E product line, the current world record-holder for actual computing speed on a real problem. The prestigious Gordon Bell Prize was awarded to a multinational team of researchers for running a full, 64-bit application on a Cray T3E system at a sustained speed of more than one trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

The 'Top500' rankings are based on Linpack, a standard benchmark test designed to compare the processor (CPU) performance of many types of computer systems. Linpack does not test other system attributes that can significantly affect the actual performance of supercomputers. From a system-level standpoint, Linpack results reflect theoretical speed and correlate closely with the theoretical 'peak speed' of supercomputer systems.

"Although this test does not measure a supercomputer's actual performance, the Top500 list is used for tracking high-level market share and product trends," said Cray Inc. Chairman and CEO Jim Rottsolk. "We're pleased that Cray's aggregate computing power increased since the list was last published six months ago, thanks to the continuing success of our high-end Cray T3E product." Rottsolk said he expects Cray's representation on the Top500 list to expand as powerful new products become available later this year and in 2002.

Rottsolk noted that for the first time in years, a vector supercomputer made it into the top 10 systems on the list. "It was an NEC SX-5 system, which Cray will begin selling exclusively in North America and non-exclusively in most of the rest of the world, along with our own Cray SV1ex product and future Cray SV2 system. We expect the Cray SV2 to be the world's most powerful supercomputer product." Later this year, Cray plans to introduce the Cray SuperCluster series and the revolutionary Cray MTA-2 multithreaded supercomputer system.

Global market research firm IDC recently distributed the "IDC Balanced Rating" benchmark test, which aims to supplement Linpack by measuring the performance of system attributes in addition to processor performance. The HPC User Forum, an organization of leading supercomputer users in industry, government and academia, is developing a complementary benchmark suite intended to test a supercomputer's performance on a range of tasks representing real-world applications.

"As today's theoretical peak performance and Linpack benchmarks evolve into tests that more closely resemble real-world computing applications, we expect Cray's market opportunity to expand further," said Rottsolk.

The "Top500 Supercomputing Sites" list is compiled and published by Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee; Hans Meuer, University of Mannheim (Germany); and Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon from the NERSC organization at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This list can be viewed at www.top500.org.