Harnessing the full potential of cloud computing can be difficult for developers, as cost, complexity, and time constraints often get in the way. Adding to this dilemma is the fact that traditional high-performance computing relies on excessive amounts of middleware, orchestration, and over-engineering. To make it easier for developers to build distributed applications that can solve large, complex and computationally demanding challenges, Hadean has created a new distributed computing platform that enables them to write scalable, cloud-native applications. To learn more about Hadean and its new platform, TechRadar Pro spoke with the company's vice president of operations, Mimi Keshani.
Can you explain to us how you discovered Hadean and the problems you set out to try to solve?
Hadean was founded to overcome the challenges of distributed computing and unlock the potential of the cloud. Using a first-principles approach, we've developed the Hadean platform, which enables developers to quickly and easily write dynamically scalable, network-native cloud applications.
How does Hadean work to overcome IT bottlenecks?
Hadean removes IT bottlenecks by eliminating excessive middleware, orchestration, and engineering, allowing developers to build, ship, and develop their applications quickly and cost-effectively. Hadean is close to metal, implementing a unique process model that transforms the reliability and scalability of distributed computing, ensuring that any application built on top of it is dynamically distributed and scalable by default.
![]()
(Image credit: Folding@Home)
The Francis Crick Institute recently announced that it is working with his company to simulate the spread of Covid-19 in the body and between people. How was Hadean's role in this collaboration?
Our simulation application, Aether Engine, will be used by the Francis Crick Institute to perform COVID-19 simulations of models that combine analysis of person-to-person interaction with insight into how the virus is transmitted. within an individual, providing a multi-scale picture of pathogen spread. The project will include computationally complex datasets, which will be managed by the Aether Engine's distributed octet data structure. It dynamically particles the simulation to provide additional computing power as needed, thereby reducing the expense and technical complexity typically associated with running hyper-scale simulations.
How will governments and healthcare organizations benefit from the large-scale models developed by your business solution? Were there any specific new or unexpected results?
Ultimately, we hope to accurately predict an individual's susceptibility to infection and the likelihood that he or she might transmit it. The project will provide near real-time analysis and enable governments and healthcare organizations to make informed decisions when planning protective measures, ultimately easing the burden on healthcare infrastructure and saving lives.
![]()
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
What do you think of the acceleration of cloud adoption after the pandemic? Do you see any potential problems?
Technology is constantly changing rapidly, and the recent pandemic has highlighted the need for greater computing power and the ability to access it quickly and cheaply. In pandemics, we also see a proliferation of available data, and therefore an increased demand for cloud technologies to store, structure, and analyze these results. Unlocking the potential of Big Data and Big Compute means we can now rigorously explore avenues like personalized and precision medicine. To make the most of the available computing power, we need to build cloud-native applications, hence the reason we created Hadean.
Last year, his company worked on a project involving protein-protein interactions. Can you tell us a bit about this project and how it led to his work with the Francis Crick Institute?
In 2019, we partnered with the Francis Crick Institute to explore the applicability of Hadean to life sciences through an Innovate UK grant. We used the Aether Engine, our spatial simulation engine, to study how to speed up computational tools to anchor two protein structures, including a series of interactions involved in certain types of cancer. We have been able to significantly reduce the computation time required to sample millions of possible protein structures, as sampling in the Aether Engine can be easily parallelized without additional developer effort and use of more diverse inputs. It meant fewer anchoring cycles needed. We published this work in the journal Proteins and renewed the contract to build on this work and model COVID-19 transmission.
![Motor de éter]()
(Image credit: Hadean)
Can you tell us a bit more about the Aether engine and how you think it could be used in future research projects?
Aether Engine is a space simulation application. It evolves across different processors and physical machines, using more computing power as the simulations grow in complexity and size. You can run complex simulations quickly and on a large scale; Greatly improving the speed, scalability, and reliability of cloud and distributed IT systems.
Can you tell us about HadeanOS, which you describe as the world's first native cloud operating system?
The Hadean Platform (officially OS) is a cloud-native operating system, which exists to implement the distributed process model. Platform-based apps are distributed by default, without the need for containers, just like our Cardinal Ether Engine app. The Hadean platform dynamically scales more or less computing power required by effectively dividing a computing task and assigning it to processors in a given cloud system, rather than that of a single server or cluster.
Are there future projects or products that your team is currently working on?
We have several interesting projects in the works. More recently, we have assisted epidemiology researchers at Imperial College through the RAMP initiative in their work to create huge spatial social networks in the UK to inform the models used to develop the NHSX contact tracing app. .