SNIA Experts on Data
Listen to interviews with SNIA experts on data who cover a wide range of topics on both established and emerging technologies. SNIA is an industry organization that develops global standards and delivers vendor-neutral education on technologies related to data.
SNIA Experts on Data
DNA: The Future of Data Storage
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Imagine a world where your data could last thousands of years without requiring even a watt of energy. The world is literally running out of data storage, and DNA may be the answer. DNA exceeds many times the storage density of magnetic tape or solid-state media and can store hundreds of petabytes in a mere gram of DNA!
Esther Singer and Dave Landsman, Co-Chairs of the SNIA DNA Data Storage Alliance, explain the potential of DNA as a data storage medium and how it presents a sustainable solution to the world’s insatiable demand for digital storage. You’ll learn how DNA data storage actually works (no, it’s not storing data on humans or animals) and hear how a collaborative partnership among a wide range of technology companies is innovating to make DNA data storage a reality.
SNIA is an industry organization that develops global standards and delivers vendor-neutral education on technologies related to data. In these interviews, SNIA experts on data cover a wide range of topics on both established and emerging technologies.
About SNIA:
Welcome to the SNEA Experts on Data podcast. Each episode highlights key technologies related to data.
Speaker 2All right, welcome everybody. My name is Eric Wright. I'm the host here of the SNEA Experts on Data podcast and the Chief Content Officer at GTM Delta, and I'm extremely proud to be able to have two amazing guests with us today. We're talking DNA storage. We're really really going to dig into all of the work that's going on inside and outside SNEA related to the DNA Storage Alliance and a lot of the work around there. With that, let's just jump right into the people that do matter on this podcast. We have Esther and Dave and I and alaska to just quickly introduce yourselves, and then we're going to talk about the efforts that you've done. What is dna storage for folks that are new to the idea? And, uh, we'll just keep on diving in. I the only thing I already know I want longer than we've got to talk about this, because this is such a fantastic and fascinating topic and the potential opportunities is amazing in my view, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that shares that. So with that, esther, do you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 3Yes, Thank you so much for having me, Eric. My name is Esther Singer. I work at Twist Bioscience and I'm Director for Product and Market Development for our DNA Data Storage Business Unit. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2And Dave.
Speaker 4Yes, and likewise thanks. I'm very happy to be part of this, eric, and nice to meet you. My name is Dave Lanzmann. I'm a Distinguished Engineer at Western Digital Corp and I'm part of the research and CTO team and I work on standards and I also have become I'm a SNEA board member and also a co-chair of the DNA Storage Alliance, which we'll talk about today, along with my other co-chair, esther, talk about today, along with my other co-chair, Esther, and the good news, too is for folks that are watching this on YouTube.
Speaker 2You get to see your beautiful smiles along with. We've got links in the show notes down below for some of the announcements and some of the initial spec papers, so definitely worth a read for people that want to dive in, a read for people that want to dive in. But I think let's give the elevator pitch. What exactly is DNA data storage? Because this is probably a fresh concept to a lot of people on what it is that we're trying to achieve here.
Speaker 4Okay, so let me jump in there. I think we want to. I really think that's a few questions mapped into one, eric, and so first let's talk a little bit about the why DNA storage. Why are people considering it? And there's a couple of main aspects to that.
Speaker 4In the broadest sense, why are people even thinking about DNA data storage? And the answer is that people are considering, you know, we're storing everything digitally today. You know, in all fields healthcare, astronomy, climate science, national libraries, and so there's this explosion of digital data that people are wanting to save, and we talked about getting into the so-called zettabyte era. A zettabyte is a billion terabytes, so we're seeing this exponential explosion of data being saved and this is causing some issues. It's increasingly expensive and impractical, um, to save all the data with the existing storage technology that we have ssds, heds, tape. So the expenses in energy and and technology refresh, you know, having to re, you know and technology refresh, having to refresh the actual media and stuff every five to seven years the sheer size of the data centers. So as we start scaling on orders of thousand X over the next 10 years, the expense of saving it in a traditional or existing storage technology is causing a dilemma.
Speaker 4I call this the save-discard dilemma. I may be throwing away value or knowledge or even future discoveries if I throw the data away, but yet I can't afford to keep it on. Existing storage tech and the trends in artificial intelligence and machine learning are making this dilemma even more acute, because we have more and more effective ways to search and pull value out of this data, so we don't want to throw it away. So in this context, people are looking at new storage technologies like DNA, like glass, like new ceramic materials, et cetera. So why DNA? Specifically? Because that's what we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3And I can talk a little bit about, yeah, what's cool about DNA? So there are a number of features that make DNA extremely attractive for data storage. One thing is it's very long lived. There is actually no long term digital data storage medium today. Hard drives, disks, tape they all have to be replaced within three to five years because they fail. So if you want to keep your data safe, you have to copy it onto a new storage device.
Speaker 3Dna can last for thousands of years and in fact, the oldest DNA that we've retrieved was from a relative of the mammoth you know, 2 million years old, perfectly intact. So DNA can be stored in a way that can last thousands of years and keep your data safe. It's also extremely dense, and the density comes into play when we're thinking about the vast amount of space that data centers are taking up today and all the energy that goes into, you know, maintaining these data centers. You can store hundreds of petabytes of data in a gram of DNA. I mean, think about that. So a petabyte is a thousand terabytes, right, and on one of these cartridges tape cartridges you have about 18 terabytes, maybe 40 or so. So that's thousands of these tapes in a gram of dna. That's the theoretical power in terms of storage density, um, it. Also dna doesn't require any power to store, so once it is in its form, you, it doesn't need to be on an energy grid, and in this day of age where energy is becoming more expensive and we need so much more of it, this becomes a very sustainable solution.
Speaker 3And then there's a few things that are just game changing, that are not really easily compared to what we see in the storage world today.
Speaker 3So one thing is you can make a thousand copies from a single original in an hour for a dollar.
Speaker 3So every time today, if you want to make a backup, that's 100% of the cost, and what's stopping most people from making more backups in case of a disaster is cost. And then there's other game-changing features, such as the portability of DNA. Because it is so small, dense and lightweight, you can really transport data, you can distribute data geographically, and then you know DNA, as opposed to many of the other technologies, is something that will just not go out of style, and I think that's what most customers are looking for. They're not looking for the next Blu-ray, they're looking for something that will persist and as long as there are humans around. Dna will always be interesting to use for research. So the tools that we use to write DNA and to read DNA will always be around. So all of these features that make up DNA, all of these benefits, we think, make it an excellent data storage medium. It already is and it'll only become more and more dominant, and it'll also lead to lower total cost of ownership in the long run.
Speaker 2It's amazing what I think of. Of course, the first thing we think of is like this is the beginning, or maybe even the end, of so many science fiction movies that we've seen the idea that they've encoded something in DNA and, like you said, we could find it a thousand years later, maybe in a little piece of amber. Then we build an island and we restart dinosaurs let's maybe avoid that one but like, hey, they can restart my Ruby on Rails app in 2000 years off of a mosquito in amber. But at the real level, there is incredible possibilities that are active today.
Speaker 4There is incredible possibilities that are active today. Yeah, dave, sorry, if I could make one comment on that point, I mean it is. I've got all kinds of funny questions when I started getting into this field. People said, well, does this mean I'm using DNA for storage? Am I storing my music in my dog Right and things like this storage? Am I storing my music in my dog Right and things like this? It is important to say, I think, that the synthetic DNA that we're using for storing digital bits in DNA is synthetic and there's minimal to no risk of creating life and we're certainly not using, you know, biological organisms. We're using the building blocks of the molecules to store data. So I think it's important to say that.
Speaker 2Yeah, when it's cause. This is even when we talk about things of like occurrences, of patterns in life, and I use the I. I had one presentation I did which it opened with just basically like a honeycomb and like a sunflower and stuff that observes. You know, we basically have have made a science out of observing patterns that exist, and then you get this funny thing at some point where people go, oh that's interesting, so bees know math, and you're like, oh no, it's actually the other way around, that bees create a thing that we observe and we have mathematical representations of what they do. It happens to be perfectly mathematical in its symmetry, et cetera, but we are observing the pattern and then replicating that using other tools and techniques. So, kind of to what you said, there is that we are learning from the bio core of the origination of it and then we're able to replicate that synthetically, which is really really an incredible thing thanks to just so many innovations that have got us up to this point in time.
Speaker 2But I think the most important thing that I want to well, not the most, an important thing I want to talk about is how do we do this as a group, as a collective? Because the DNA Storage Alliance is interesting in how that came together and then the relationship to how you started to pair up with SNEA. So I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on what is the DNA Storage Alliance and the purpose and what you like about being able to work in a large group that has diverse views, lots of people that are innovating together, even though we potentially even work for competitors in the industry. Sometimes it's such a neat thing in how standards organizations can work together.
Collaboration for DNA Data Storage
Speaker 4So I'll start with that one. So the DNA Storage Alliance, which now constitutes about 40 member organizations, it was formed in 2020 as a group of small companies, a group of companies and universities sorry, not a small company a group of very, you know, from major to startups and universities and we had a goal of wanting to create an interoperable DNA data storage ecosystem. So the way we we were independent of SNEA and we were debating whether, to you know, do we incorporate ourselves, you know, or how do we? How do we grow? And because we wanted to start not just talking together but to actually potentially write storage or write specifications and standards. So, as far as our journey with SNEA, we joined SNEA in 2022. And we felt that we looked around at options and we felt that SNEA's expertise in standards development and we felt that SNEA's expertise in standards development, as well as its established breadth as an industry association, would help us drive. It would be a good platform for us to drive the mission setting.
Speaker 4It's kind of an interesting thing to try and create standards in such a nascent ecosystem. People think usually when you create standards, it's in a field where there's a lot of technology, many people are solving a problem in different ways and we're trying to unify in some ways so that we can be more efficient in the ecosystem and grow things. This is the essence of standards. So we are trying to be very and yet we felt that certain specifications and things could help bootstrap this nascent ecosystem. So we wanted to do that without. We wanted to create some specs and standard ways of doing things without stifling innovation.
Speaker 4So the alliance has created a few standards. One is called the Rosetta Stone. It's kind of a master boot record, if you will, for how you dig into a DNA archive and identify how it was built and how it's structured. We have a standard called the DNA Stability Evaluation Method, which is about evaluating the capabilities of DNA containment systems to store the data. Because, as we were talking before, we've recovered DNA in fossils that is millions of years old. But when we do commercial storage of DNA, we're going to build containment systems and those containment systems will have different capabilities and costs and flexibility. So we felt this evaluation method here would help do apples-to-apples comparison of preservation methods, interfaces, which is how you know if you put a DNA storage system in a data center, how do the pieces interact and what kinds of interfaces need to be standardized so that we can have different vendors contributing solutions. So that I've rambled on a bit, but that's kind of the SNEA the DNA Storage Alliance and SNEA story.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I would add, Eric, that when you are building such a groundbreaking new technology that is trying to disrupt an existing industry, it takes not only a village, it takes the world, a multitude of villages with a common goal.
Speaker 3Yes, right, Because there are vendors. There are. This is a semiconductor-based technology. There are fabs, there are strategic partnerships to be made and utilized. There's the voice of customer and utilized there's the voice of customer. There are so many players in the field as it exists today, that all have to come together as well in order to help this technology get to market, and so the alliance is absolutely critical for DNA data storage to become commercialized.
Speaker 2And I'm going to ask a question of you, esther, given that you're coming from, I'll say the other side of it. So, in from coming from the biosciences world and then, where you've generally leveraged technology, not necessarily thinking that you would be defining technology, how does this you know, how did this come into your world and and what does it feel like relative to some of the other?
Speaker 3you know, projects you you worked on leading up to this work so this is super exciting because, um, we are working at so many different interfaces and every time I feel like you work in an interface of something that's where you have a huge potential for real revolutionary and new tech and real problems to real sorry, real solutions to existing problems.
Future of DNA Data Storage
Speaker 3And so in this case, we're bringing together the semiconductor world and the synthetic biology world right In a completely new way and, like I said, the data storage industry has been around for a long time, but it hasn't really been disrupted in a very long time and to learn about this new world the data storage world to me, new to everyone else, like Dave, existing for a long time and learn about their pain points and how the biology world can actually help address these pain points. It's like a match made in heaven, right, and so it's. It's this constant interchange, this exchange of how can we help each other to not only bring a cool technology to market, but to actually help humanity and store data and preserve our legacy. So it has a bigger purpose and it has a. You know there's a drive to do this and many people believe in it. Many people see that it's not only cool but there is a big market as well, right, and it can really, yeah, be here to stay and it will be.
Speaker 2And there is a beauty to the unlikely friendships that likely have developed because of the ability to cross over. And what we often find is that, like I've been in technology for a long time, I'm a nerd at heart and but I've always thought about why it matters. I say what do I do for a job? I give emotion to technical content, I turn speeds and feeds into business needs, understanding the technology but relating it to what it can actually do and how it can create benefit for people. And this is the beauty of solving a very complex scientific and, you know, semiconductor like these are physics problems that we're solving, but as a result of doing that, the breadth of capabilities we're now going to open up to the rest of the world as consumers.
Speaker 2For this is incredible, and doing so with that standards-based approach, like you mentioned, dave, it's sort of a slowdown to speed up. Let's make sure that we're all building from the right base and in doing so, then that actually speeds innovation, which is counter to what people think. It's like they have to think of regulation as slowing innovation, but in these cases it's actually quite the opposite, that now, if we know here's our specification that we work from, then when we get into interchange and interoperability. There's no question that whatever you build, if it's built from spec, it's immediately you can play with this ecosystem and that is a boon that I think we've learned. You know, sort of from open source of like you know we don't have to be from the same you know at emailcom company name in order to contribute to this, but everybody can benefit from us all collaborating together. So it's pretty amazing to see.
Speaker 4Yeah, and you know. To elaborate a little bit on that point, I think it's super important that what we're trying to do when we set any specs or standards here is to draw some guidelines and boundaries around where pieces of the DNA storage pipeline need to interact, but to allow innovation around those boundaries, which is the essence of what people try and do with standards in general. It's just particularly challenging when the core technology is quite nascent, but quite nascent. But this is. We do feel that we can promote the growth of the ecosystem by selectively defining some specs and we'll leave things like we're not going to try and define. How does the chemistry of tagging objects in DNA? There's many ways to do that right objects in DNA. There's many ways to do that and we don't want to, and those are very vibrant areas of research and development. So we don't want to specify those. But we can specify how you characterize the capabilities of a system or other aspects that don't get into the implementation but help the ecosystem come together.
Speaker 2So and it is truly a bidirectional win. In my view of like we're and Esther, you're probably seeing this is that you may be making discoveries on other ways to leverage DNA as a result of us trying to build an application towards this, because we may find that nature has found a way to do a lot of the things that we're trying to do in a synthetic and, as a result of that, we may actually do more discovery through synthetic to organic applications. It's such a beautiful world for us now to be able to have more reasons to get down to this level of discovery and then build back up from it.
Speaker 3No, absolutely For the longest time. What's been holding DNA data storage back to actually becoming a product and to become competitive cost-wise compared to all the other existing, you know, drives and tapes is the cost of DNA synthesis synthesis. So DNA synthesis, you know, is something that Twist has already scaled and therefore, you know, taken the price down, and for DNA data storage you have to do the same thing, but several orders of magnitude further, and so that's what we're working on and you can extrapolate from there. If we can make DNA even cheaper to synthesize, you can make a gene even cheaper to synthesize, an oligo, an oligofragment, lots of different DNA-based products that could go into other applications of synthetic biology, for example, for oncology research or agricultural research, materials and sciences. There are many applications that use synthetic DNA besides data storage, of course, and so all of these fields of science and tech can benefit from the advances that are coming out of driving the DNA synthesis technology further to become competitive in the data storage world. So you're spot on there.
Speaker 2Well, and it's the interesting thing is we get to teach each other in ways that now we're basically creating a language map between storage and synthetic. You know biorepresentation. It's also probably fun that you get more people get to say deoxyribonucleic acid. How often you get to say that in in in a storage community. It's actually kind of cool. But on the other side too, you know, dave, did you imagine at the start of your career and moving into Octo and some of the R and D that this would be an area that you'd get to explore in your career, let alone lifetime?
Speaker 4Well, that is a great comment, because no, the short answer is no. And you know, I've been in. I've got a computer science, electrical engineering background and I've been in the tech industry for decades, actually creating, using molecules to store data and potentially even do compute operations in the storage. It's just mind-boggling and when I first kind of encountered it I frankly thought, boy, is this really science fiction? And it was clear to me after I got into it that it's not science fiction. And the you know, it was clear to me after I got into it that it's not science fiction and it's. You know, we're starting to see the blending of these, the chemistry and biology, with the semiconductor technology, to be able to actually do things with DNA as a medium. So it's been a complete joy for me, I have to say, to get involved in this and I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 2And I also think it's a counter to everybody that you know and I work and I've got a lot of friends in the storage industry. I've got clients in the storage industry and I've been a fan of. I run data centers at scale at big companies and I've worked with a lot of storage and the thing that I always find consistent is that we always say, I know we're just a boring storage company. Like, don't say that's fantastic what you guys do. I like that storage itself is boring, that it just works and I like that it just works. That part should be boring. I want it to just work. I don't want to like, I want it to be less exciting.
Speaker 2And you know, in alerts, but I sure love you know, even just today, moving from spinning you know platters to the point where we have long-term successful storage it's. You know on persistent memory, you know just the. Even to explain the idea of NVRAM concepts years ago to people of you know it was, they're like wait a second, do we actually trust this to hold data for a period of time? And I got told like yeah, we couldn't keep stuff on cds because they'll physically degrade, so put it onto usb sticks. And then somebody said well, wait a second, those aren't going to last forever, and we'd been injected with this idea that it naturally must have a failure rate and a degradation just like it.
Speaker 2And then we go to this next level, where now we're looking at biorepresentation in synthetic that we carry over to storage and no one can say well, I don't know if this DNA thing is going to stick. I don't know. It's been around for a couple of years.
Speaker 3Yeah, maybe this is a good point to explain to the listeners how DNA data storage actually works. We talk about it as a concept, but I think it's important to just see that it's nothing scary. Like David said, we're not storing data in animals or humans. So what DNA data storage really entails is the right part writing DNA, storing DNA and reading DNA. And, for example, this podcast could be stored in DNA. What this podcast is made of is zeros and ones in the digital realm, and what you need to convert these zeros and ones into the DNA code of ACGT is what we call a codec. So this codec translates between these two languages. It also has other features, such as an error correction algorithm built in. It makes sure you store your data efficiently in DNA.
Speaker 3And so you start with your podcast and zeros and ones and you turn that into the components of DNA and ACGT, and then you write DNA, you synthesize DNA, and that's done using a DNA synthesizing machine, and then you come out with these molecules, these physical molecules of DNA. If you were to look at them, it would just be a transparent liquid. You wouldn't really see very much right. And this DNA, all it encodes for again is your podcast. There are no genes, there is no biological function, and there are rules, right, for what we can actually write in DNA that we have to adhere to. So now you have your podcast in this DNA molecule, in this transparent liquid. Now you need to store it, and we can store it away from the three things that degrade DNA, that's UV light, oxygen and high temperatures. As long as you keep it away from those three things, your DNA is safe and your data, your podcast, will be safe for thousands of years and people can then read it back in a thousand years and see what we thought of, you know, when DNA data storage was still nascent, whereas in a thousand years it was probably going to be in everybody's computer.
Speaker 3And they can read it back with a technology called DNA sequencing. And they can read it back with a technology called DNA sequencing. It's again a machine that takes the liquid out of your storage container, and you know I actually have one of these storage containers on my desk. This could be one of these, right? This is a stainless steel capsule. This capsule could have several terabytes of data inside. Compare this with a tape of this size, which doesn't have that much more data. It's also tens of terabytes, so you can see the volume and density difference. And so you read your data back and you get out ACGTs, and then you apply the same codec that you used to translate the zeros and ones into ACGT to translate it back to your digital file and out comes your podcast that you can watch on your computer. So that's really the workflow.
Speaker 2Yeah, and the good thing too is the links in the paper to the specs.
Speaker 2We talk about the concept of sector zero, sector one, the ability to do mapping and understanding, and effectively, when I look at it from that layer, like, oh, it's just another object store, it has attributes, it has parameters, it has capabilities that we expose through those ways, and so the artifact is easy to map onto it. And then now on the hardware side, then, dave, you and the rest of the hardware world gets to build those. You know sequencers and you know how do we get it in, get it out, and then what are the actual practical use cases we have right now that you're sort of looking at? That would be probably the first thing to look at, because it's the other thing with being nascent is we think there's a thousand different things we could think of, but then when you ask somebody for a specific, it's very hard to come up with a singular one. So I'd love to hear you know do you have specific practical applications that you're you're aiming for or or achieving at this point?
DNA Storage Applications and Innovations
Speaker 3Yeah, I think because of the nature of DNA, meaning its longevity, its density and its portability. The use case of archival data comes to mind immediately. Right, I think up to 80% of all data in the world can be considered as archival, so very little data is actually accessed frequently and is computed on, and most of it. If you think about your own data files at home, your photo albums how often do you actually access a picture or a video that's older than six months? At the organizational level, you know it's the same thing, but nobody wants to throw any data away, and so that data needs to be stored somewhere, not only the safest way, but also a way that leads to lower total cost of ownership.
Speaker 3The most energetically friendly or environmentally friendly way is on DNA, so that's long-term archival. There's also this use case of backup and disaster recovery, right, so that goes a step beyond. Once you do run into a scenario, just like universal studios 2008, where a big fraction of their library burned down, their archive burned down and hundreds, tens of thousands of original artworks forever um not replicated anywhere and that was yeah, I remember even hearing like the we've lost the first 10 years of the Tonight Show of.
Speaker 2You know that's one I recall, but like there's so much that's just gone, you know a thousand copies in an hour for a dollar of the same artwork could just prevent that same situation from happening again, where you lose something forever and then you know again.
Speaker 3Because it's portable and relatively lightweight, you could distribute your data a lot more than you have today. Today we're really thinking about data centers when we think about data storage, right, everybody's uploading stuff into the cloud, and the cloud is not a nebulous thing. That's data, that's drives and tape, physical objects that are storing your data. But data centers aren't existent everywhere in the world. There are hubs for that. With DNA, you could sort of distribute your data a little bit more geographically, you know, and have it where you actually need it. So it's sort of democratizing. Maybe I don't know if that's the right word, right, but you could think about having an efficient data storage that is no longer tied to the you know, quite extensive infrastructure of a data center as we have it today you know, quite extensive infrastructure for data center as we have it today, and definitely when we think of the amount of data being created on a daily basis.
Speaker 2you know I think you know sort of YouTube calls out this that in the next 24 hours there will be more YouTube videos uploaded than there were in the first 10 years of YouTube. That's today. First 10 years of YouTube. That's today. That's not slowing down and that's one example of thousands of applications. And then we get commercial applications.
Speaker 2We see a lot of the hyperscalers. They're offering the idea of sending a data store to you. You load your stuff on it because of bandwidth and throughput capabilities, because we can't do it over the wire, nor can the network. You know, not only can the network not handle it, but it's expensive to do it that way. And then from there so like there's all this expense and toil to get to the final result, which is kind of then expensive long-term storage. So it is such a fantastic thing at every layer and Dave, on your side of it, of course, being the one that has to deal with that interchange and moving data in and out of these things, because data is used for other things. It's not just data by itself. It's data that drives applications and that we build whole ecosystems on top of. Where are you seeing the practical applications on the storage side with where you're working?
Speaker 4Yeah. So I think there's no doubt that the initial use cases of something like DNA storage will be for probably deep archival use. But, like we've discussed a little bit throughout the time here, what you're essentially doing with DNA is you can think of retrieving the whole archive or you could think of redoing a key value access or an object access for something that is stored and, of course, at the molecular level, we have to add the object tags and things like that so that we can do it standard access method with different performance and latency characteristics, etc. But one thing to so today we have a basis for a read store, a write store, read pipeline for archival, read pipeline for archival. But we're working on not like the entire DNA ecosystem. It's working on I heard you, as you know chemical instructions.
Speaker 4So using the molecular power of DNA to and the complementarity within the molecule so that you can have probes that go in and pull out an object versus pulling out the whole archive. So these are things that people are working on, not only for storage operations like read, write, delete, object, not just the whole archive. People are also looking at index search and ways to potentially search the archive, because of course, we don't want to throw this data away and dna enables a a cost-effective way to store all the data without and not lose it. But then we have to find what we're looking for. So these random access methods that are being looked at and are super important to move DNA beyond kind of the all archive, deep archive use case into more active recovery and search, if I made sense there.
Speaker 2And search if I made sense there. Yeah, no, that's. And I think that what that lights up in my mind is that, in the same way that we often say, you know, we want to go back to the moon, and people say why, like are, we're not going to move to the moon, we're not going to develop societies on the moon, but what they don't necessarily understand is the amount of innovation that occurred as a result of things we did in trying to get to the moon and to the point where we call these moonshots now right, like, but this is a moonshot that number one is actively delivering use case capabilities on both sides on the bio side and on the metal side and as a result of work that we're going to do, for each of us to solve each other's problems, are likely going to open up use cases in both camps and we will quietly discover incredible innovations and optimizations we can likely do in the way we store, retrieve and manage storage today, like, even looking in databases. It was one I noticed recently. So sorry, I'm going to go into specifics.
Speaker 2I used to use a MySQL and I moved to Postgres because it's supposed to be more performance and it just took my brain too long to convert to Postgres. But I use Ruby on Rails all the time and it ships with SQLite and I get told all the time, like, don't ever use it in production, it won't scale beyond X. But what we did in trying to make all these other platforms work was we've discovered innovations that allowed in this case. Now SQLite, as an example, now operates incredibly well because of things we learned through trying to solve storage problems and retrieval problems and query interface problems. That got rolled into this tiny little thing that is now fantastical to where it was 10 years ago, and I think this is not necessarily that we're going to say in our lifetime, the world will move to DNA storage as primary storage.
Speaker 2It's the fact that in our lifetime, the world will move to DNA storage as primary storage is the fact that in our lifetime at least of the three folks on this call and folks that are listening we're going to see innovations that you won't realize are tied to what's going on right now in these alliances and in these standards bodies and in the experimentation you're doing. So, first of all, bravo and thank you for doing things that you may not see yourself get an award for in your career, but knowing it's more important for us to move towards an answer than to like we have to make moves. That could take a long time, but that's the only way we get there. But I do think it's important to say we have to make moves.
Speaker 4that could take a long time, but that's the only way we get there. But you know, I, I do think it's important to say I think we'll see, I think we'll see archival use cases come to fruition and you know, and in much you know, in the next next five years or so, right, this is my personal view of things, kind of hovering at the alliance Whether we'll get to more.
Speaker 4You know whether and when we'll get to more flexible use cases. I think that will take a bit longer, but the technology is moving, thanks to companies like Twist and many other alliance members who are working on solutions.
Speaker 2It's definitely. I get excited. When I saw the chance for us to speak on this, I just thought, wow, like when could I, a lowly shoe repair man when I was in my teens who would make his way into technology, that now I would be speaking to two folks who are part of something that's leading us in a fantastic direction as a as a storage and a bioscience world. So this is awesome. So thank you very much, both of you, and, on the way out here, I'd love to ask Esther and Dave anything you would suggest for folks to maybe go take a look. We'll have links, of course, to some of the spec that we shared in the press release about the DNA Storage Alliance, but where are good places for folks to maybe reach you as well as to look up more about the work that you and the teams are doing?
Speaker 3Yeah, would love to hear from folks who are interested to know more about DNA Data Storage. We have an email address info at dnastorageallianceorg. I think we'll post that here. We have a LinkedIn channel at DNA Data Storage Alliance. We have a Twitter channel and we also send out newsletters quarterly. So if you want to stay up to date with DNA Storage, reach out, become connected and be part of our little ecosystem.
Speaker 2Fantastic Dave.
Speaker 4What Esther said.
Speaker 2It is perfectly wrapped Well both of you. Thank you so much, and, dave, if people do want to reach you, what's the best way they can find you? Of course, you're doing fantastic work with SNEA as well as at home office. You know davelandsman at wdccom if they're welcome to take any questions or contacts.
Speaker 4But yeah.
Speaker 2And, of course, there's always great stuff going on with SNEA, and we just had SDC and I know that we're looking at 2025. As for folks that are potentially looking to pick up membership, there's been a lot of neat changes. We just published a podcast with Dr Jay Metz talking about new updates for the next year on membership. So folks that are keen on SNEA or you know they do want to dig into more of what they can do with folks like the DNA Storage Alliance, definitely reach out to any of us here, drop a comment and again, you know it's an honor to share a microphone time with both of you. I'm thankful for all the. I feel invigorated every time I read these papers. I'm like this is awesome. So, and it's great to see that you're going to do this and, you know, create a future opportunity for so many folks. So thank you both.
Speaker 3Thank you Eric.
Speaker 4Thanks, Eric.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening. For additional information on the material presented in this podcast, be sure and check out our educational library at sniaorg slash library.