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Cray Inc. Extends OEM Agreement For Altair's PBS Pro™ Grid Computing Technology To Next Generation Of Supercomputer Products

Cray Selects Altair's PBS Pro Grid Technology For Cray X1E, Red Storm, Cray XD1 Systems TROY, Mich., Oct. 21, 2004 - Altair Engineering Inc., a global leader recognized for innovative product development, advanced engineering software and grid computing technology, announced today the long-term extension and broadening of their OEM agreement with Cray Inc. (Nasdaq NM: CRAY). Under the new seven-year agreement, Cray® will continue to bundle Altair's PBS Pro Grid computing technology with its current Cray X1 supercomputer product line. In addition, PBS Pro will be bundled with the successor Cray X1E product, Cray's upcoming Red Storm-based product, the Cray XD1 supercomputer and future-generation products.



The Cray X1E system is a substantial upgrade to the Cray X1 system that will push high-bandwidth computing to a new price/performance level. Red Storm is a 40-TeraOps (40 trillion calculations per second) supercomputer that Cray is scheduled to deliver this year to Sandia National Laboratories under a $93 million Department of Energy contract. The Red Storm-based product is an Opteron/Linux system that targets the need for highly scalable microprocessor-based supercomputers with high bandwidth. The Cray XD1 supercomputer, priced from under $100,000 (U.S. list), is an Opteron/Linux system for the entry-level and midrange HPC markets.



PBS Pro enables customers in the government, life sciences, energy, research, logistics, manufacturing and financial industries to optimize the utilization of their high performance computing environments by aggregating computation resources into a virtual pool and intelligently scheduling their computational workload across this virtual pool. Engineers and scientists who utilize PBS Pro are more productive because they can focus their attention on their analyses and are relieved of the need to remember various application and operating specific job control languages.



"Altair and Cray have developed an excellent working relationship over the past three years and we are pleased to extend this OEM agreement to include our next-generation products," said Wayne Margotto, engineering manager at Cray. "Cray selected PBS Pro for its ability to meet our demanding requirements for scalability while providing the reliability and resiliency features needed in these demanding environments."



"Cray has been a great partner and working with Cray has helped Altair better understand and evolve our products for very large complex environments," said Michael Humphrey, vice president of Altair Engineering's Enterprise Computing Business Unit. "We are excited to extend our OEM agreement and look forward to being a part of the success of Cray's Red Storm product."



About Cray Inc.

Cray's mission is to be the premier provider of high performance computing for its customers' most challenging scientific and engineering problems. Go to www.cray.com for more information about the company.



About PBS Pro

PBS Pro is the commercial version of the Portable Batch System (PBS), originally developed to manage aerospace computing resources at the NASA Ames Research Center. PBS Pro is the leader in high performance workload management and the de-facto standard for batch queuing on LINUX clusters.



About Altair Engineering

Through product design consulting, advanced engineering software and high performance computing technologies, Altair Engineering increases innovation for clients around the globe. Founded in 1985 and privately held with offices throughout 11 countries, Altair's unparalleled knowledge and expertise in product development and manufacturing extend throughout North America, Europe and Asia. As the developer of Altair® HyperWorks® - The Engineering Framework for Product DesignTM, Altair is the leading provider of high-end, open CAE software solutions for modeling, visualization, optimization and process automation. The company’s grid computing software, PBS ProTM, is a workload management solution for high performance computing environments, LINUX clusters and desktop cycle harvesting that delivers an ROI within one year. For detailed information about Altair, visit www.altair.com


Michael Kidder

Altair Engineering, Inc.

(248) 614-2400, ext. 269

mkidder@altair.com