Sun, Supercomputer Maker Cray to Team Up : Technology: The two will work to link their machines. Also, the workstation company will help Cray develop cheaper models of its powerful calculating systems.

Cray Research and Sun Microsystems, the respective world leaders in supercomputers and desktop workstations, have agreed to build new links between their machines and cooperate in the development of a new line of lower-priced Cray systems.

The deal should help make Cray’s technology available to a broader range of customers. It also represents an important new endorsement for Sun’s SPARC computer design, which is locked in a battle with competing designs from IBM, Hewlett-Packard and MIPS Computer Systems.

But Cray said the deal did not mean that it would use the Sun technology in future “massively parallel” supercomputers. Such machines link thousands of microprocessors--computers-on-a-chip that are widely used in personal computers and workstations--to achieve far greater computing power than traditional supercomputers.

Cray, playing catch-up in the massively parallel race, also announced Wednesday that it had received a $12-million government contract to pursue massively parallel technology, but it remained cagey about whose microprocessors it will use. The company is reportedly leaning toward the new Alpha chip from Digital Equipment Corp.--which recently agreed to resell Cray supercomputers--rather than Sun’s SPARC.

The agreement with Sun calls for the two companies to develop “seamless” connections between Sun’s high-powered desktop workstations and Cray’s line of supercomputers. Cray also said it would develop a new line of what are sometimes called “mini-supercomputers” that use Sun’s SPARC chip design.

The new machines will cost between $1 million and $3 million and will be developed by a new Cray subsidiary, Cray Research Superservers Inc. The new unit incorporates Floating Point Systems, a mini-supercomputer company that Cray purchased last year.

Cray Chairman John Rollwagon said the link-up with Sun represented a “substantial opportunity” to extend the firm’s reach. While Cray dominates the market for multimillion-dollar supercomputers that are used for the most demanding scientific and industrial chores, other companies have filled the growing demand for the mini-supercomputers that businesses use to store large databases and link up networks of desktop machines.

Cray has also let upstarts steal a march in massively parallel computing, but the company is preparing to counterattack. Rollwagon said that while there was “something very attractive” about the design compatibility that the company could achieve by using SPARC chips for its massively parallel program, he emphasized that performance was the only significant criteria in choosing a chip for that program.