| Sumario: | New competitors and new technology are changing the face of the supercomputer market. Cray Research supercomputers and those made by its Japanese rivals combine a small number of powerful data processors to crunch numbers, a process known as vector processing. This computer power is costly, with the cost of Cray's top-of-the-line Y-MP C90 supercomputer standing at about $1,870 for each megaflop (million calculations per second) of computing power. A new breed of supercomputer makers, however, is using a process known as massively parallel processing (MPP) to make supercomputers at a fraction of the cost of a Cray by linking vast numbers of small, off-the-shelf processors. MPP-based machines are nibbling mostly at the lower reaches of Cray's market, but MPP technology is also being used to attack Cray's flagship machines. Cray is responding to the threat by unveiling a T3D supercomputer that will combine vector and MPP technology and by moving downmarket.
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