The MTA is also substantially easier to program than other types of parallel computers, which should facilitate its broader use in general-purpose computing. The SV1 is a vector supercomputer that is compatible with Cray's earlier Cray J90, YMP, C9, and T90 product lines. Plans call for the system to scale to peak performances of multiple tens of teraflops. One teraflop is equivalent to a trillion calculations per second. The combination of Cray Inc. product offerings will be designed to enable market growth by providing performance on software programs that today are often limited by existing computing hardware capacity, and by offering customers product solutions tailored to address customer problems.
Applications software is crucial to commercial sales.
The architectural breakthrough of the Tera MTA system simplifies the problems of parallel programming, making it possible to host applications of critical importance to industry that, until now, have resisted effective parallelization. Tera is confident that Cray Inc. can expand the market for supercomputing beyond traditional applications as worldwide demand for sheer performance begins to dominate e-commerce and enterprise computing. Substantial new opportunities may also materialize as the increasing bandwidth of the Internet backbone enables new customer-oriented products that will depend on the highest levels of computational capability. Salomon Smith Barney served as investment banking advisor to Tera Computer concerning this transaction. Closing is expected within 60 days after that date, and is subject to customary regulatory approvals.