Announcing its Cray Y-MP4E supercomputer, Cray Research Inc said that in performance tests published last week by the US Los Alamos National Laboratory a uniprocessor prototype of its C-90 machine proved faster than Japanese supercomputers in some tests. The C-90 outperformed NEC’s SX-3 on 11 of the 15 sample problems and did better than a Fujitsu VP-2600 on nine. The C-90, to be out late this year as the Y-MP/16, will cost about $30m and have 16 processors. The VP-2600 and SX-3 each have only one processor, but NEC is expected to release a four-processor version of its machine later this year. The Cray Y-MP4E, available next month for about $7.3m, costs about two-thirds as much as other supercomputers with the same performance, Cray said. The company has announced its first order for the new machine, from the German Climate Research Centre in Hamburg to go in this quarter.
