Cray Research Japan has provided one of its Y-MP EL minisupercomputers on free loan to the Computational Fluid Dynamics Institute, a supercomputer services bureau that went out of business last year as a result of the burst bubble of the Japanese economy. Set up in 1985 by Kunio Kuwabara, formerly an associate professor of the Space Research Institute under the Ministry of Education, at its peak the Institute had five Japanese supercomputers from three manufacturers including Fujitsu Ltd, running full-time. However when its main customers, the motor manufacturers, reduced their demand for time and services by half, lease payments on the machines became difficult and all five machines were withdrawn by their vendors. The new company that has arisen from the ashes of the old will have a revised outlook and will be run in a more businesslike manner than was the previous company, which was run by academic amateurs, according to senior managing director Mr Itamiya. The in-house-developed Nagare fluid dynamics software has been converted to run on the entry-level Cray supercomputer, and Cray is expected to help the Institute to sell the software on the world market.
