JAPAN: WATCHING US SUPERCOMPUTER PROCUREMENT CLOSELY (DELETED)

Created: 5/6/1996

OCR scan of the original document, errors are possible

Intelligence Report

6 Mc-

Japan: Watching LS Supercomputer Procurement Closely.

Japan's NEC Corporation is positioned to win its first-ever saleS Government facility. NEC recently *on die performance test at thc National Center for Atmospheric Researcheating out one US and another Japanese vendor,CAR orYiciais XWLmm^

Japanese Government and industry consider thisest of the openness of_ the US market to Japanese supercomputers.

overerce;

In ;hc six vears since the agreement into effect. US vendors' shzre ot the Japanese public sector market has grown from !ess thanercent tr-

Many industry experts assess the performance of rrost advanced SEC supercomputers as roughly comparable with that of leading US systems.

The NEC supercomputer outperformed other competitors at NCAR because its architecture is well matched to NCAR's requirements for long-term weather modeling computations.

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is offering its systemrice well below L'S counterparts.

It is unclear, however, if NEC is selling the system below cost- NECarge, vertically integrated firm with world-class, in-house. semiconductor production capabilities: this provides the firmignificant advantage over its US competitor.

plans aggressive price cuts over at least the next three years (see attaches graphic).

An NEC winrestigious US Government facility would improve the vendor's prospects for additional US sales.

to recent US Government st-jdy. NEC accounts for less than one percent of the supercomputers operating ir. the United States.

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j Some industryelieve that NEC will benefit from workingthe expert supercomputer usersCAR. Most supercomputer makers rely on :hsir most advanced users to define next generation hardware and software.

Original document.

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