April 2, 1995
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:       Marcia Murakami
	       (519)725-4040
	       Hypercube, Inc.

Hypercube Introduces Ab Initio Computations into HyperChem

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - At the National Meeting of the American Chemical 
Society (ACS) in Anaheim, Hypercube, Inc. showed off its latest version, 
*Release 4.5 for Windows*,  of its popular molecular modeling package, 
HyperChem.  The new release has the capability of performing full-fledged ab 
initio quantum mechanical calculations for molecular systems of quite 
moderate size.  "In the past, we've stuck to the faster molecular mechanics 
and semi-empirical calculations, in line with the interactive nature of 
HyperChem," said Dr. Neil S. Ostlund, the President and CEO of Hypercube, 
Inc.  "PCs have become so fast, however, that we thought it was time to 
introduce ab initio capabilities into HyperChem."

The new Release 4.5 of HyperChem principally differs from the previous 
Release 4.0 of HyperChem by the inclusion of these ab initio 
calculations.  Other small improvements have been made, however, such as 
the ability to handle isotope effects in vibrational analysis.  New 
capabilities associated with the graphical user interface and 
visualization will now be targeted at a future Release 5, which is 
expected to be associated with Windows 95.  "We didn't want to hold up 
making ab initio calculations available to our users until after Windows 
95 ships, so we decided to put out this intermediate Release 4.5," said 
Dragan Vuckovic, International Marketing Manager at Hypercube.  "Each 
release puts us further down the road towards making HyperChem an 
accepted standard for molecular modeling software, especially in the 
educational environment."

Release 4.5 of HyperChem continues Hypercube's practice of coming out 
with a newer and better product every 12 months or so, with a simple, 
inexpensive upgrade policy.  Release 4.5 allows users to perform ab 
initio SCF calculations of single points, geometry optimizations, 
molecular dynamics, vibrational analysis, and optical spectroscopy, using 
any combination of s, p, and d orbitals.  Correlation energy calculations 
at the MP2 level are also available.  The new ab initio calculations are 
integrated into HyperChem in a way that is parallel to the semi-empirical 
quantum mechanical calculations of earlier releases.  Thus it is easy for 
the user to visualize ab initio orbital energy plots, electron densities, 
etc.  For comparison with other platforms and programs, a minimal basis 
set wave function calculation for a glycine dipeptide zwitterion takes 
approximately 3 minutes on a 90 MHz Pentium computer.  "The speed and 
simplicity of these HyperChem calculations now make ab initio technology 
accessible to everyone," commented Joel Polowin, Manager of Scientific 
Support at Hypercube.

While Release 4.5 of HyperChem for Windows is being announced and shown 
off in conjunction with the ACS meeting, it is not yet shipping and is 
still undergoing last minute beta testing.  It is expected to be shipped 
to customers within the next 60 to 90 days.  However, orders are being 
taken now.  Hypercube will continue to sell Release 4.0 to those 
customers who do not feel they need the enhanced accuracy (and longer 
computation times) of ab initio calculations, when compared to Release 
4.0's semi-empirical quantum mechanical calculations.  Hypercube also 
made a separate announcement at the ACS meeting that it will, in the near 
future, begin marketing an X-Windows/Motif/GL version of HyperChem for 
computers from Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI).  An SGI version of Release 2 
of HyperChem was marketed earlier by Autodesk, Inc.

The commercial price of HyperChem Release 4.5 for Windows is $2595 while 
that for Release 4.0 is still $1995.  The upgrade from Release 4.0 to 
Release 4.5 is priced at $795, although users who purchase Release 4.0 
between now and the shipping date of Release 4.5 can obtain the upgrade 
for $600.  Government and academic discounts of approximately 50% are 
available.

Background

Hypercube is a privately held scientific software company incorporated in 
1985 and headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  Its principal 
product is HyperChem for Intel-based PCs running Microsoft Windows.  
Other products include ChemPlus, a set of extensions to HyperChem, and 
HyperNMR, a package that performs a priori quantum mechanical simulation 
of NMR spectra.  A Windows NT version of HyperChem is also available for 
the Digital Equipment Corporation Alpha PC, as are client-server versions 
of HyperChem that use UNIX computational servers from Silicon Graphics, 
Digital Equipment Corporation, and IBM.

HyperChem is a molecular modeling software product noted for its ease of 
use.  It is a comprehensive desktop productivity tool for visualizing, 
analyzing and communicating information about molecular structures as 
well as for performing the calculations of computational chemistry.  It 
is the most widely-used molecular modeling software for the Microsoft 
Windows environment of IBM-compatible PCs.

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HyperChem is a trademark of Hypercube, Inc. All other trade and product 
names mentioned are the service marks, trademarks or registered 
trademarks of their respective holders.

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