More Second-Tier Machines to Debut This Week : Supercomputer Industry Has Hidden Strength

The news on the U.S. supercomputer front has hardly been cheery this year.

The sales pace is sagging. One major manufacturer has folded its tent. And the founder of the entire industry, Seymour Cray, was released by his own company, Cray Research, to independently pursue some untried and rather expensive theories about how the world’s fastest and most sophisticated computers should operate.

But beneath this bleak surface, analysts say, are signs of renewed vigor among companies offering newer technologies and less expensive systems.

This week, two more U.S. companies, the computer division of Evans & Sutherland in Santa Clara, Calif., and BBN Advanced Computers of Cambridge, Mass., will introduce new high-performance scientific computers. That will bring to four the number of new systems unveiled by American computer companies within the past two months.

These systems don’t pretend to rival the top-of-the line models offered by Cray Research of Minneapolis, the last remaining maker in the United States of full-powered, $20-million supercomputers. But, analysts say, they nevertheless demonstrate that there’s more life to the $1-billion-a-year U.S. supercomputer industry than many had once thought.

“These are the second wave of systems,” said Chris Willard, an analyst with Dataquest, a San Jose high-technology market research firm.

Some Dispute Claim

“They don’t have the leading-edge technology but they show that you can still make money with machines that aren’t the fastest on the planet. And they show the industry is getting some depth.”

At the same time, many analysts may argue that these new machines don’t even count as supercomputers. They note that the machines are neither the fastest computers available nor programmed to perform the most sophisticated scientific calculations, such as those needed to simulate nuclear weapons explosions, airplane landings and chemical reactions among new drug compounds.

But among customers with budget constraints and more traditional computer demands, these second-tier machines are often the ideal solution.

Analysts said Evans & Sutherland, a maker of sophisticated computer graphics machines, today will introduce a mid-range supercomputer designed to take full advantage of the company’s established graphics expertise. The company, which is perhaps best known for its commercial and military flight simulators, declined to comment on the announcement.

However, analysts said the systems will feature up to eight microprocessor units working in parallel formation. The systems will range in cost from $2 million to $8 million.

BBN is expected Tuesday to unveil its latest system, which is aimed at both technical markets and commercial applications such as database management. Additional details were sketchy.

During the past several weeks NCube, of Beaverton, Ore., and Thinking Machines of Cambridge, Mass., introduced advanced computers to their existing lines.

Tasks Divided

Although the power and applications offered by the four new systems vary, all employ the same basic technology known as parallel processing.

This approach allows computers to divide a task among a number of microprocessors--just like those used in personal computers--and then combine the results into a single answer.

Other types of supercomputers, so-called vector systems, handle work through very powerful processing units that work independently rather than in tandem with other processors in the system. For certain types of tasks, the parallel approach is considered faster and less expensive.