Today while reading an e-paper on HPC, I came across this humor. Loved it and sharing it.
Creating a good tasting coffee may be art, but keeping it fresh is a science. A leading food packager has found that instead of metal cans, plastic containers maintain coffee freshness longer after they're opened. The simple solution was to switch to plastic coffee containers right? Well not so fast. Plastic created
another problem. Coffee continues to release gasses after packaging. A metal container can easily sustain the pressure, but a metal container doesn't keep the coffee as fresh. The solution was to design a check valve that releases the pressure that builds up in the plastic coffee container. This solution, while fixing the first problem, created a second issue. When the coffee is shipped to the stores, the truck can take mountainous routes where the outside pressure becomes quite low. Gases exit the container via the check valve, but when the pressure increases the container implodes. To avoid "crushed coffee" the company
applied HPC technologies to engineer a container that would, for lack of better words, "implode gracefully." Using some clever design and HPC, they were able to create canisters that can travel far and wide yet still maintain their shape and keep the coffee fresh after it is open. This may be a good time to mention that
there is often lots of coffee-drinking involved in the world of HPC too — good to the last FLOP.
[tags computing, technology]
[category computing, technology]
