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Cray XK6 Supercomputer Used To Simulate Ice Cream
An anonymous reader writes "The processing power available inside modern supercomputers isn't just able to help us better understand the universe we live in, develop better medicines, and model complex systems. Apparently it is also helping to make better ice cream. Research has been carried out at the University of Edinburgh to simulate the soft matter that makes up ice cream. More specifically, scientists are trying to understand the complex interactions occurring between the many different ingredients that make up your favorite flavor of the delicious cold stuff."
How are you supposed to simulate something when the simulation generates so much heat that the simulated object can never exist long enough to run the simulation ?
How are you supposed to simulate something when the simulation generates so much heat that the simulated object can never exist long enough to run the simulation ?
Don't worry, they simulated the freezer first.
You need a supercomputer to simulate Android 4.0 ?
What will it take to simulate Jelly Bean
BTW my tablet runs Honeycomb 3.2.1 OK.
...who thought "Ice Cream" was some short for Ice Cream Sandwich? With the second thought: "why would anyone need to simulate that in a supercomputer?"
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
Hopfully they find a way to create instant icecream
1/2 instant cold pack, 1/2 dehydratated icecream
There is something wrong with the summary. Ice cream is also part of the universe we live in.
I'd rather have a Cray XK6 made out of ice cream. On an equally frivolous note did the Cray run Ice cream Sandwich ?
They all scream for ice cream.
Do you see what I did there?
It's not clear to me why this research will improve ice cream's shelf life. Is shelf life limited by our understanding of the relevant physics?
Of course, I doubt that's why they're actually doing this, but it won't necessarily improve the practical side of making ice cream at all. That has been studied extensively an an empirical fashion, and we have pretty good information on how different methods and ingredients turn out. What's less clear is the reason for it, i.e. the physics behind some of the processes. That's good to learn to advance physics, but may or may not lead to practical improvements. And those practical improvements may or may not have anything to do with shelf life...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
When the ice cream giants take over the planet, someone will invent a time machine just to go back in time an tag this "what could possibly go wrong".
Learn to love Alaska
Patented flavors!
Who get's the first patent for "tastes like shit"!!?
...great Ice Cream!
Scientists do indeed have great imagination.
I guess they got their budget from the global warming studies department.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Now to simulate a cat...
You beat me to it. I was going to make a joke about the Cray XK6 running Ice Cream Sandwich as its OS, instead of the several, well established multi-processing versions of either BSD or Linux, such as a DragonFly or a Debian.
They'll probably set up the experiment on Mars, so that the ice cream just wont get the heat required to melt
to know the high impact this study will have on the whole World!
It's nice to have all those resources focused on making our world a better world!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
They are asking HOW does it blend?
rewriting history since 2109
The Cat in the hat in the box.
rewriting history since 2109
New meaning to Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream?
I've got to wonder what they boot this supercomputer from. Because if it's optical media, then that means that somewhere there's an xk6cd. And that's got to be just a little confusing for the geeks who get to work on it.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Sorry, I'm not eating grey goo nanotech ice cream.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Paul Davies talks about million-year-old civilizations of aliens exploring the universe physically (among other things) in his book "The Eerie Silence." But I don't think that will be the case. And looking for signals from them is an exercise in futility. The only exploration of the universe in any time that satisfies the need to do so will take place in massively complex computer systems based on a much deeper understanding of physics than we now have. That old civilization probably already computer-simulates we are here; it may even computer-simulate that YOU are here. I wonder if they started by simulating ice cream and nuclear explosions.
But the thought is moot. I don't believe there is other intelligent life in the universe. We are the universe asking itself what it is, and the universe does not have a head full of voices.
E Proelio Veritas.
I'm not convinced this research will be proven out until they can simulate the effects of screaming on ice cream.
Make non dairy, aerated, high fructose corn syrup sweetened treats not war?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm allergic to dairy, you insensitive clod!
They didn't even render images of a semi-frozen liquid mass pouring and deforming around solid surfaces.
It's 6 paragraphs of "Scientists did this thing. So and so happened, and we have nothing to show for it."
This article was pointless.
They forgot to simulate a spoon.
The dastardly Icenberger exclusion principle rears its ugly head once more!
That shit Cray.
at least they are not crunching peoples encrypted data... ;)
... Professor Frink's Virtual Chili!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Have gnu, will travel.
Liquid nitrogen ice cream is awesome....
However, the XK6 chillers are a lot more boring. We take room air from under the floor, run it through a cold plate, blow it through the cabinet across 12 Opterons or 6 GPU's vertically, and then go through another cold plate and exhaust it at (approximately) the same temperature it came in it.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
After the ice cream, the supercomputer then produced a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The article doesn't say what OS the computer is running, but it has to be Linux -- presumably a distro that uses Yum.
They'll probably set up the experiment on Mars
I thought that would be for the flavour? If that would be the case, I certainly hope they won't do it on Uranus as well...
-- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
He's from Edi... :-D