DNA repositories are not yet ready to go to the masses, but some experts that the situation will change in the near future. More and more companies are starting to deal with this issue.
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Why are they doing DNA storage?
On organization Cambridge Consultants, drives will soon no longer be able to cope with the changing requirements for storage and work with growing volumes of data in data centers. A number of IT industry experts are convinced that the solution lies in the development of alternative media.
In terms of recording density, the journal Nature that all the data of the world can be recorded in a DNA storage weighing up to one kilogram. As for the lifetime of such a drive, it can reach (according to various estimates) or years.
Another reason why experts consider DNA repositories to be promising is the steadily decreasing cost of writing data to this medium. If in 2002 the cost of writing one character into a molecule was $10, by 2016 it was $0,05. If this trend continues into the next decade, the technology will usher in a new niche in the storage market. Approximate , the annual turnover of the DNA storage segment could reach hundreds of millions of dollars within the next ten years.
Who creates DNA storage
The prospects of the medium are attracting large IT companies, which are considering the possibility of using it in archival data stores. For example, Microsoft launch DNA storage by 2020. It is noteworthy that the company's specialists have already succeeded artificial DNA helix 200 megabytes of data and achieve a write speed of 400 bytes per second. New developments will improve these figures, although so far we have to talk about fairly massive installations for data storage, old copiers of the 70s of the last century.
Another company that develops DNA storage is called Catalog. This startup modular laboratory, the size of a bus. It is immediately equipped with everything necessary for the synthesis of DNA molecules and their further storage. The unit is planned to start selling in 2021.
Biological engineers are also interested in technology. Potential in DNA storage Harvard professor George Church. He and his colleagues want to create a special "biological" chamber. It will not have electronic or mechanical components, and the photo or video will be stored directly in the DNA molecules.
Another project in this area is SGI-DNA. Team A DNA printer that is comparable in size to an ordinary office device. The system is already being used to print molecules for biological and medical research. But the developers plan to use the printer to encode information into DNA.
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but on the other hand
There are also more cautious opinions in the IT industry about the new media. By , it will take several decades for the mass dissemination of technology.
The first reason - recording cost. Although it has been declining in recent years, storing data in molecules is still expensive: it would cost about $XNUMX to store a one-megabyte file in DNA.
The second reason — low speed of data recording. Microsoft companies and partners 400 bytes per second. But according to the company's engineers, for the mass distribution of technology, the throughput must be equal to 100 MB / s.
Third reason — potential problems with IS. Researchers at the University of Washington have that in any case, computer viruses can be stored in a DNA molecule. In the future, this will give attackers the opportunity to introduce malware into the networks of specialized laboratories and compromise storages with personal data.
Alternatives to DNA storage
It is too early to talk about the mass introduction of DNA storage, so a number of companies are developing alternative and improving existing technologies. One of them is magnetic tape. It has been used in data centers for storing archived data for several decades. Its service life reaches years. While not comparable to the longevity of DNA, tape outlasts hard drives and solid state drives. The latter serve up to ten years. Another important advantage of the tape is the cost. The cost of storing a gigabyte of memory just two cents.
For these reasons, magnetic tape is still used by large IT companies, in particular IBM. By representatives of the IT giant, this carrier will be used in data centers until at least 2030.
The second alternative to DNA storage is nanostructures. For example, in 2016 engineers from the University of Delft a plate of copper, on the surface of which a lattice of chlorine atoms was built. By changing the location of the "holes" in the lattice, the authors encoded the bits in the strings. On one square centimeter of the surface of such material, it will be possible to record up to ten terabytes of data.
Another technology related to nanostructures, Chinese scientists in 2018. We are talking about a film of titanium dioxide and silver, which is 80 times thinner than a human hair. Information in this case is stored in nanoparticles that change color when exposed to a laser beam.
According to the creators of the technology, a piece of film measuring 10x10 centimeters can store a thousand times more data than a DVD. At the same time, the write speed on such a drive reaches gigabytes per second.
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Source: habr.com
