"This nation has to decide whether it wants to support a national supercomputer company," complained a top executive at one of Cray Research's competitors.

"Huge computing problems are not going away, but it's tough to see how any supercomputer company is going to survive in the long-term."

To a large degree, American supercomputer companies are all value-added distributors of Japanese equipment.

The technological and market forces that brought down Cray Computer have forced the failure of many of formerly high-flying supercomputer companies.

In 1957, Control Data Corporation, a pioneering supercomputer company, was founded by William Norris.

Tera issued cash, stock and notes to purchase the once-struggling supercomputer company from Silicon Graphics.

Danny Hillis, a computer scientist who founded Thinking Machines Inc., an early supercomputer company.

Cray, the dominant American supercomputer company, has struggled in recent years.

He also believes, they said, that his supercomputer company can have applications for the entertainment industry.

He went there after the failure of an earlier supercomputer company in Colorado, Denelcor.