Store Data on DNA Computers

US Spy Agencies Want to Store Data on DNA Computers

Intelligence agencies have a plan to build computers that can store data or information inside DNA and other organic molecules.

IARPA(Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) , a group within the office of the director of National Intelligence announced plans to create "tabletop"-sized machines that can store and retrieve information from large batches of polymers.

Polymer is a wide variety of long and string like molecules that can store data or information in the sequence of individual atoms or groups of atoms.

This project is an attempt to solve a basic problem of the vast and growing costs of data storage.

Datacenters sucked up 416.2 terawatt hours of electricity in 2016(3% of global supply) and it accounts of 2% of global greenhouse gas emmisions.

But no one has yet figured out how to implement DNA data storage on large scales.

Molecular Information Storage will be broken into three parts: a 2 year program to figure out how to store data in DNA or other molecules at high speeds,a 2 year program to figure out how to retrieve that data at high speed and a 2 year a two-year effort to develop an operating system that can run on that DNA.

Many of the technologies IARPA wants to develop are untested at these scales, so it's unclear how far away that proposed "tabletop" device" really is.

Source : Live Science.

By Twinkle Mishra