November 2024

Who inspired the system names?

Are you curious about the names of KTH/PDC's supercomputer systems?

Dardel

Dardel is an HPE Cray XE supercomputer that is currently the flagship system at PDC.

The system was named in honour of the Swedish author, Thora Dardel, and her first husband, Nils Dardel, who was a Swedish painter. The front panels of the Dardel system feature four paintings by Nils Dardel: "The Dying Dandy" oil painting (which is one of Nils' most famous works), a section of the famously expensive “Waterfall” painting and a section of ‘'Crime of Passion‘ (another of Nils’ well known works), plus a portrait of Thora. The background text on the blue panels is from Thora's book about Nils (which is known as "En bok om Nils Dardel" in Swedish).

The Dardel system consists of two partitions - one based on CPUs and one that uses graphics processing units (GPUs) - split over two rows. Although the majority of supercomputer systems at PDC have been named after Swedish authors, PDC's earlier GPU-based system was named after the Swedish artist, Anders Zorn.

Consequently, it seemed highly appropriate to name the new system after the Dardels, as Thora was an author and Nils was a painter. Although Thora and Nils divorced after 13 years of marriage, they remained good friends until Nils’ early death from a heart condition.

Interestingly, Nils painted "The Dying Dandy” in 1918 at the time of the great influenza epidemic that lasted until 1920. A century later in 2020, the world once more found itself in the grip of a deadly pandemic, so the choice of this painting also serves as a salute to the courage of the medical and care personnel who worked so hard to care for those infected during the COVID19 pandemic and also to the sorrow of those who lost their loved ones to the recent pandemic. It is also a reminder of the contributions supercomputers make in the fight against illness - for example, by being used to model how viruses actually infect people on a molecular level, which makes it possible to develop new types of vaccines.

PDC thanks the Moderna Museet (Modern Art Museum) in Stockholm, and Prallan Allsten, for providing the high-resolution photo of "The Dying Dandy" that is used on the front panels of the system. If you are curious, you can see The Dying Dandy” at the Moderna Museet. The portrait of Thora is owned by a private collector.