In 1959, future Nobel Prize winner and theoretical physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk to the American Physical Society wherein he famously stated, “It is a staggeringly small world that is below.” His talk, which came to be known as “Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” focused on the potential of manipulating matter at the atomic scale, a field that would become nanotechnology.
Delivered at a time when computers filled a whole room, Feynman’s fanciful descriptions of miniaturization and nanoscale information storage sounded like science fiction. In an analogy intended to inspire, he pointed to the enormous amounts of information that can be carried in cells, where “all of the information for the organization of a complex creature such as ourselves can be stored….All this information is contained in a very tiny fraction of the cell in the form of long-chain DNA molecules.”
Though only mentioned as an analogy, his point about DNA as a master storage medium soon became a legitimate scientific question. Suppose you could write to and read DNA, which is so clearly suited to information storage? DNA is easily reproducible and difficult to destroy. Under proper conditions it can last millennia.
By 1988, the first demonstration of DNA data storage was carried out when artist Joe Davis successfully encoded a few bytes of pixel information from a rudimentary image onto a long DNA molecule and inserted it into E. coli bacteria. The information was retrieved through DNA sequencing, and the image was successfully reconstructed. Fast-forward three decades, and DNA storage technology is viable enough to be pursued by at least a dozen startups that, combined, have tens of millions of dollars in funding.
Modern civilization demands vast amounts of data storage. Some estimates project that the global datasphere will consume a whopping 175 zettabytes by the end of the year—that’s 1.75 followed by 23 zeros. And, when you consider that the majority of long-term data is still archived on magnetic tape, which has a maximum lifespan of 30 years, it becomes clear that we have a problem of scale.
The startups mentioned above see synthetic DNA as a solution, and the companies are working to increase the speed of writing to and reading from DNA, as well as reducing the cost for this technology. If those hurdles can be overcome, the world’s data storage problem might be solved. Imagine all 175 zettabytes of the world’s data archived onto the most modern high-storage-density tape: These cartridges, laid end-to-end, would circle Earth’s equator 75 times. By contrast, one exabyte of data can be stored in just one cubic millimeter of DNA. That means that the world’s data, archived in DNA, could fit in a teacup.
However compelling DNA data storage might be as a solution for archival data, it is never going to be an answer for information that needs to be frequently accessed. Data storage for personal computers and mobile devices will rely on continued innovations and incremental advances in microelectronics and data-center communication technologies, which is the emphasis of this issue of Photonics Focus. The articles that follow explore some of these cutting-edge developments: MEMS-based mirrors for space telescopes, advanced lithographic techniques for microchip production, and advancements in VCSEL lasers to expedite information transfer between computer racks in data centers.
Like DNA data storage, each of these innovations demonstrates how the staggeringly small world that Feynman envisioned is becoming an integral part of our technological future, solving problems at scales both minute and massive.
Gwen Weerts, Editor-in-chief
