If all goes according to plan, the plug will be pulled from Cartesius on September 1st. That’s it High performance computingThe system has been a trusted computing service for over eight years as the Netherlands’ national supercomputer. In that capacity, scientists can rely on Cartesius for the complex calculations needed for their research. From September 1 they can go to the national supercomputer for this, but that title will carry a completely different system. The system is named Snelius and is manufactured by Lenovo for SURF.

Snellius derives its name from Willebrodd Snell van Roen, a prominent mathematician who lived from 1580 to 1626. Like many scientists of the time, he was at home in other fields of research, including surveying, navigation, hydrography, and astronomy. He gained great popularity in the field of optics, nicknamed Snell’s Law, the Latin name, which refers to how light rays differ in the transition from one medium to another. In France, they talk about Descartes’ law, which describes the law of refraction independently of Snelius. Descartes’ Latin name is Cartesius, the name of the former national supercomputer. All this is free from the choice of the name Snelius; It was chosen in part because of its connection with ‘Fast’.