Published May 2008
Alcoa, the world's leading producer of aluminum products, was one of the first companies to make major use of high performance computing when it became the NSF-funded Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's first industrial affiliate in 1987. When aluminum faced growing competition from plastic and other composite materials, the company used the PSC supercomputer to handle the complex modeling and simulations needed to get the jump on their competitors by successfully redesigning cans for the beverage industry and a variety of components for the automotive, aerospace, building and construction industries.
