Japan Accused of Favoritism in Supercomputer Deal : International trade: Cray says a Tokyo appeals board violated an agreement on fair bidding.

The chairman of the top U.S. supercomputer maker, miffed at losing a major contract to a Japanese competitor, accused Japan on Friday of violating a trade agreement on fair bidding.

John A. Rollwagen, head of Minnesota-based Cray Research Inc., said a special government appeals board was being protectionist in upholding a public institute’s decision to buy a supercomputer from NEC Corp.

“I understand the Japanese government’s desire to support Japanese supercomputer suppliers, but that support has gone a bit too far this time,” Rollwagen said at a news conference.

An NEC spokesman denied there had been any favoritism.

“Some people are trying to give the impression that we were given the contract because we’re a Japanese company, but nothing could be further from the truth,” NEC spokesman Mark Pearce said.

On Wednesday, the appeals panel turned down Cray Research’s request for a reversal of a decision in June by the National Institute for Fusion Science to buy a supercomputer from NEC instead of Cray Research.

The closely watched appeal was the first made under a 1990 U.S.-Japan supercomputer procurement agreement. Cray Research charged that the institute’s decision was unfair under the agreement.

In Washington, U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills called Thursday for consultations with Japan over the decision. Rollwagen, speaking in Tokyo, said Commerce Secretary Barbara Hackman Franklin also backed Cray Research’s stand.

Japan’s minister of international trade and industry, Kozo Watanabe, said the consultations could take place next week at a meeting of trade ministers, Kyodo News Service reported.

Rollwagen charged that the review panel had failed to respond to Cray Research’s claim that the technical standards used in the selection process were biased in NEC’s favor. He said both computers met the institute’s minimum performance standards in several tests, but Cray Research was not given credit for surpassing the standards by a greater extent.

In the 1990 agreement, which only applies to supercomputer purchases by public agencies, Japan agreed that procurement processes would be open, selection standards would be defined clearly and thorough evaluations would be conducted.

Cray Research says it won three of the four bids it submitted for Japanese public supercomputer procurements in 1990-91. Although its computer in the June bid was slightly more expensive, the difference was less than 10%, Rollwagen said.

The value of the contract was not immediately available.

NEC’s Pearce said the panel confirmed its stand that the bidding was fair.

“We had exactly the same information (before the bidding) that Cray had,” he said.

Cray Research has had considerable success in selling to Japanese private companies, with a total of 27 private-sector sales.

Supercomputers, which cost millions of dollars and handle massive amounts of data, are used frequently for scientific research, defense and auto and aeronautical design.

Different models are designed to excel at different kinds of calculations, making overall performance comparisons difficult. Purchase decisions are further complicated by software incompatibility among different supercomputers.