Canberra, Australia -- The Australian National University (ANU) has
contracted Fujitsu Australia Ltd. to install a VPP300 parallel computer for
scientific and engineering applications.

  The VPP300 features vector processors with peak speeds of 2.2 Gflops and
distributed memory with 512 Mbytes per node. (Maximum configuration is
currently 16 nodes with 2 Gbytes per node). The processors are connected
with a cross-bar switch allowing data transfer at 570 Mbytes/sec. The system
uses CMOS technology and SCSI devices. Three disk arrays with 48 Gbytes
capacity will initially be installed. Software will include FORTRAN 90, C,
PVM and MPI. Fujitsu Workbench, which provides integrated productivity tools
for Solaris and VPP systems, will also be included, ANU noted in a press
release.

  The VPP300 will be used by students and staff for a variety of
applications, including climate studies, biomolecular modeling,
astrophysics, the design of fusion power supplies and in seismic modelling
and other areas of the earth sciences. ANU computers are also available to
industry through special programs.

  "In conjunction with the depth of experience in high performance computing
and its applications at the ANU, these resources maintain the University's
prominent international position in computational science and engineering,"
Dr. Bob Gingold, head of the ANU Supercomputer Facility, said.

  "The computational approach is now accepted as a third way of doing science
and engineering, complementing the traditional tools of experiment and
analysis," he added. "High performance computing is essential where phenomena
are too complex to solve by a purely theoretical approach. It is also
invaluable in situations where it is too expensive, dangerous or impossible
to do experiments".

  The ANU was the first Australian university to invest in high performance
computing when it acquired a Fujitsu vector supercomputer in 1987 and
established the ANU Supercomputer Facility. This was followed by the
installation at the University of more experimental massively parallel
computers, including the first Fujitsu AP1000 to be installed outside of
Fujitsu's own laboratory.

  The ANU and Fujitsu collaborate on a number of major research and
development projects in high-performance computing and its applications which
were initiated in the late 1980s. Projects include computational chemistry
software development and climate modeling. Computational mathematicians at
ANU have been developing scientific algorithms for the VPP series of
supercomputers for several years.

  As a result of the addition of the VPP300, Australia will move into
the top 40 of the world's current "TOP500" computers with the fifth most
powerful supercomputer outside of the U.S.A. and Japan, according to an ANU
press release. The fastest computer in Australia is currently ranked at 263.