Supercomputers

Legendary computer designer Seymour Cray, the father of the supercomputer and long one of the world's most daring and inventive technologists, clung to life Monday at a Colorado Springs, Colo., hospital after a traffic accident left him with a broken neck and massive head injuries. Kate Brewster, a spokeswoman for Penrose Hospital, said Cray, 70, was in critical and unstable condition after surgery was performed Sunday to relieve pressure on his brain caused by swelling.

Inspired partly by the deaths of 14 firefighters, scientists are trying to use the power of supercomputers--once used only to simulate nuclear bomb blasts--to help foresters battle wildfires. "The ultimate goal is to save lives and property," said Rod Linn, who is doing the research at Los Alamos National Laboratory's theoretical division. Rugged terrain and capricious wind can combine to make a wildfire veer and turn unexpectedly.

The decision by the National Science Foundation last week to select a Japanese supercomputer for climate research has sent shock waves through the federal research establishment and raised serious questions about the competitiveness of U.S. firms. It marks the first time that Japanese suppliers have beat long-dominant Cray Research in a competition for a major federal procurement, showing that the United States' long superiority in supercomputing technology is now facing a serious challenge.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has selected NEC Corp. of Japan as the primary vendor to supply a multimillion- dollar supercomputer for a Colorado weather research center, NEC said today, marking the first time the U.S. government has purchased such a machine from a Japanese company. The decision came despite intense lobbying by U.S. supercomputer vendor Cray Research Inc.

In a surprise move, Silicon Graphics Inc., the maker of powerful graphics computers used to render the special effects in motion pictures such as "Forrest Gump" and "Jurassic Park" as well as 3-D workstations for scientists and engineers, will announce its intention to acquire troubled supercomputer pioneer Cray Research at a news conference to be held today in New York, sources said. Cray executives are expected to support the acquisition.

The U.S. government always held that the spread of nuclear weapons could be slowed by clamping down on exports of American supercomputers. Now the Clinton Administration has decided that over-regulation of one of America's flagship exports only hurts U.S. businesses and is no longer useful for non-proliferation efforts. Predictably, the congressional and academic non-proliferation communities promptly criticized the Administration's decontrol of most computer exports.

The Energy Department announced Thursday that it will work with Intel Corp. to develop a powerful new computer that will help make it possible to assure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpiles without setting off underground nuclear explosions.

Famed computer designer Gordon Bell, inventor of the seminal VAX minicomputer, has joined Microsoft Corp., for which he will establish a new San Francisco research laboratory and pursue a novel concept in high-performance computing. Bell has acted as a Microsoft adviser for the past four years, mostly offering guidance on future technologies. Now he will join Jim Gray, another highly regarded computer scientist, on a project called SNAP (for "scalable networks and platforms").

The thing that makes a supercomputer super today is the same thing that drives a home computer. But more of it. Supercomputers were once room-size machines and the stuff of technology legends, helping the government forecast weather or scientists analyze earthquakes, create new drugs and understand nuclear physics. They're still the most powerful and expensive computers being made but now they look like big refrigerators.

Take one desktop computer. Dump numbers into it as fast as you can, and the machine gobbles them up. Now string dozens of desktops together. It's a feeding frenzy called a supercomputer. Intel Corp. is trying to translate that concept into a new product that can build on Intel's world dominance as the leading manufacturer of microprocessor chips for desktop computers.