Based on early research involving the storage of movies and documents in DNA, Microsoft is developing an apparatus that uses biology to replace tape drives, researchers at the company say.
Computer architects at Microsoft Research say the company has formalized a goal of having an operational storage system based on DNA working inside a data center toward the end of this decade. The aim is a “proto-commercial system in three years storing some amount of data on DNA in one of our data centers, for at least a boutique application,” says Doug Carmean, a partner architect at Microsoft Research. He describes the eventual device as the size of a large, 1970s-era Xerox copier.
Automating the process of writing digital data into DNA will also be critical. Based on the several weeks it took to carry out their experiment, Carmean estimates that the rate of moving data into DNA was only 400 bytes per second. Microsoft says that needs to increase to 100 megabytes per second.
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