Nissan Buys Computer From Cray, Not Hitachi

Nissan Motor announced Wednesday that it will buy a supercomputer from Cray Research of Minneapolis rather than from Hitachi, a member of Nissan’s Fuyo business group.

The sale, for an estimated $12 million, is the fifth in Japan of the Cray supercomputer, which can carry out hundreds of millions of calculations per second.

Nissan officials, who took the unusual step of calling foreign correspondents to inform them of the decision, said nothing about the current trade friction between Japan and the United States but did refer to “competing domestic makers.”

“In terms of hardware and software capability, the company judged Cray’s machine to be best suited to its needs,” the Nissan announcement said.

Competition for the order between Cray and Hitachi had attracted widespread attention, including reports that the U.S. Department of Commerce and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative approached Nissan.

Japanese newspapers said that, when Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone appealed to his people last month to buy more foreign products, it gave Nissan an excuse not to buy from Hitachi.

Nissan said it decided to buy the Cray computer in the belief that “it will become essential to help work out sophisticated design computations and ever more complicated engineering problems.” It specifically mentioned its activities in aerospace development.

Until the early 1980s, Cray and another American firm, Control Data, had almost a world monopoly on supercomputers. But, in 1982, Fujitsu entered the field, followed the next year by Hitachi. NEC plans to deliver its first supercomputers this year.

American trade negotiators have charged that the Japanese government has intervened to divert several potential Cray sales here to its Japanese competitors. The Japanese deny the charge.

Two of Cray’s supercomputers were delivered in Japan last year, to Nippon Telegraph & Telephone and Toshiba. Fujitsu has sold four supercomputers here, and Hitachi has sold three.

The Japan Economic Institute, which operates in Washington on behalf of the Japanese government, has reported that Cray hopes to deliver as many as 16 more supercomputers to Japanese customers by 1990.

A Nissan spokesman said the company will pay $6 million for the mainframe Cray XMP-11 supercomputer and about $6 million for software, with delivery expected next year.