Matching funds are provided to upgrade an Alliant FX/1 computer to an FX/8 4 element parallel processing computer that will serve as a general purpose computing facility in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The computer will reside as a computational node on a newly installed MIT campus wide Ethernet which links all departmental computing systems and will also be connected to Harvard University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution via high speed data channels. The upgraded computer will provide essential computing resources for computer bound projects in many areas of earth sciences research, including seismology, convection modeling of the Earth's interior, planetary science, marine geology, and space based geodesy.