DNA Storage Alliance Launches Website and Publishes First White Paper on Technology
Introduction to DNA storage discusses why it is needed and expected to address exponential growth of digital data.
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on June 18, 2021 at 2:31 pmThe DNA Data Storage Alliance, an organization of more than 25 companies formed by Twist Bioscience Corporation, Illumina, Inc., and Western Digital Corp. together with Microsoft Research, announced its first white paper titled ‘Preserving our Digital Legacy: An Introduction to DNA Data Storage.’
The white paper, which can be found on the newly launched DNA storage Alliance website, presents DNA storage fundamentals in an accessible way for both technically curious readers and for IT business, computer science or electrical engineering readers interested in the benefits, a technical overview, and the cost of ownership of this potential new storage medium. It discusses why DNA storage is needed and expected to address the exponential growth of digital data.
A recent Gartner reporti estimates that “In 2020, humans likely generated in excess of 400ZB of digital ‘stuff’ – equivalent to 400 million petabytes or 400 billion terabytes (or 40 ‘shoeboxes’ of DNA storage).” Further, “Gartner considers a 35% per-year growth scenario – closely reflecting the actual growth we saw beginning in 2010, a year that might be considered the birth of the cloud storage area – to be most likely.” According to the report, “new breeds of storage technologies must be created in response to the emerging need for immense available capacity at minimal cost in enterprise data centers.” (1)
The density of DNA storage is unprecedented. If the space inside an LTO cassette (approximately 235,000mm3) were filled with DNA-based bits, the cassette could hold about 2,000,000TB, or about 115,000x the number of bits on an LTO-9 tape. In addition, encapsulated DNA has been shown to remain stable for 1000’s of years, even in harsh conditions.
“It’s undeniable that data growth is outpacing the scalability of today’s storage solutions. Literally, everything we do revolves around data – and capturing, storing, processing and mining it only serves to create even more data. The density and stability of DNA storage will help the industry cost-effectively cope with the expected future growth of archival data for many decades to come,” said Steffen Hellmold, VP, corporate strategic initiatives, Western Digital.
Another key aspect of DNA as a storage medium is the immutability of its format. With existing storage technologies, the physical structure and format of the media and the methods used to read and write to it are fundamentally coupled. In contrast, DNA’s structure means that any gen of DNA readers and writers will be able to read and write DNA as long as the bit encoding formats are saved.
“The method for reading back data – either periodically to check data quality, or when needed for processing – is critically important in the life sciences as well as for storage. Due to DNA’s universal format, DNA media will always be readable and writable,” stated Alex Aravanis, MD, Ph.D., CTO, Illumina. “We continue to drive sequencing technology forward at a rapid rate, with new applications like DNA storage, and anticipate an active role in this market.“
“In addition to density, stability and eternal relevance, DNA storage provides a far more sustainable option, requiring negligible space and energy when compared to current data centers that use an ever-growing amount of power and land,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder, Twist Bioscience. “Taken together, DNA’s storage density, durability and minimal maintenance costs reduce the cost of maintaining digital data in DNA over time, making it a viable option for long-term archival data retention.”
“The intersection of the trend toward massive digital storage needs with our ability to manipulate synthetic DNA offers a vision of data archival ability that could change the scale of what we store and how long we store it,” commented Karin Strauss, senior principal research manager, Microsoft Research. “Preserving our digital legacy in turn opens possibilities to extract, and even create or discover, new knowledge.“
The DNA storage Alliance expects to release additional white papers detailing use cases and market opportunities and requirements.
(1) Gartner, Emerging Technologies: New Active/Accessible and Deep Archive Data Requirements – DNA storage, John Monroe, April 23, 2021
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