April 10 to 12 saw the second annual SuperComputing Japan 91 conference and exhibition in Tokyo. Supported by the US Department of Commerce, the American Embassy and the Japan External Trade Organisation (supercomputers are, after all, a trade issue), the three days included a high-level conference with sessions on various application areas including computational fluid dynamics (for aircraft and car design talks by researchers at Boeing Co and Nissan Motor Co), structural analysis (applications of supercomputing to safety development – Nissan and MacNeal-Schwendler Group), performance (including a talk on the performance of the NEC SX-3 supercomputer by Dr Raul Mendez, head of the Recruit Institute for SuperComputing Research in Tokyo), and others on supercomputer architecture, use in chemistry, and environmental analysis. The exhibition held concurrently had exhibits from 60 companies and organisations and around 10,000 visitors were expected. The Cray Research Inc booth was crowded with visitors wanting information on the newly released Y-MP/4E machine; almost alongside were booths from two companies that are new joint venture partners with Cray, Yokogawa Cray ELS, which was formed in December last year as a 50-50 joint venture with Cray, for sales of the Cray XMS minisupercomputer, and Canon Supercomputing SI Inc, which sells a range of computers including the Cray Y-MP2E and the FPS Model 500EA Sparc minisupercomputer. Kubota Computer Corp had on display the Titan graphic supercomputer as well as a range of MIPS-based machiens the RS3230 workstation and the RC6280 enterprise server. Convex Computer demonstrated through its distributor Tokyo Electron, where the Ultra-Net 1Gbps Ultra Network System was also on display – 20 UltraNet systems have been sold in Japan already, according to a Tokyo Electron representative, and this has been primarily on Cray and IBM Japan Ltd systems; however growth in sales is expected as the Japanese supercomputer vendors such as Fujitsu Ltd, NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd provide interfaces to the UltraNet equipment in their operating systems – Fujitsu’s is ready already. BBN Advanced Computing Inc’s TC2000 was on display at the Argos Graphics stand. UK company Torque Computer Ltd was represented by its distributor Marubeni Co, and Mark Ware Associates Ltd of Bristol, developer and designer of Transputers said that it was actively looking for representation. In addition, NEC was touting its new SX-3 supercomputer, Fujitsu its strength in research and development and Hitachi its S-820 supercomputer, pandering to the Number One Japanese sporting passion by running among others a golfball path simulation system.
