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Salmon DNA Used In Data Storage Device
Zothecula writes "Scientists from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a 'write-once-read-many-times' (WORM) memory device that combines electrodes, silver nanoparticles, and salmon DNA. While the current device is simply a proof-of-concept model, the researchers have stated that DNA could turn out to be a less expensive alternative to traditional inorganic materials such as silicon."
Sounds fishy!
We all know Tuna is better.
Might be cheaper, but I bet its more prone to mutation and degradation. Will this lead to data evolution?
well of course you'd use WORMs with fish....
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
DNA and the Cosmic Serpent. Ayahuasca. Etc.
You gotta tell 'em! Soylent flash is people!
combines electrodes, silver nanoparticles, and salmon DNA. ... DNA could turn out to be a less expensive alternative to traditional inorganic materials such as silicon.
could turn out = Weasel words. After I arrive at home, it could turn out that space aliens have swapped my wife out for a supermodel as part of an alien sociology research study regarding recreational human reproductive activities, but I'm thinking its unlikely.
Have you seen the price of salmon? I had a nice grilled slab last night wrapped in some herb leaves and lemon juice. I could buy quite the stack of I2C flash memory chips for that price. I'm not thinking that the salmon-flashdrive equivalent of the HHGTTG babel-fish is necessarily going to be profitable. And carrying around a dead fish with firefox installed on it sounds like some Stross Laundry series plot.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So that salmon oil I'm taking really WILL help my memory!
Why would you use salmon DNA? Just for the halibut?
Hey, if they can run a multi-billion dollar satellite with a dirty rag, why can't they build data storage out of fish bits? I question how well this will work as well.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
30 minutes is good in the lab, but in reality, we need WORM technologies to be readable for a lot longer than the stated 10^5 seconds. We need readability in decades or centuries for the underlying medium, and that is before we slap the ECC layer on top to deal with bad sectors/blocks and such.
What might complement this technology would be developing a way to cause the DNA to polymerize (similar to how organic tissue is preserved in "Bodies: The Exhibition"), so once it is written, it stays in that form for a far longer period of time.
It's 3 o'clock and so it's time to shop shop shop.
Say, have you ever sat at your computer and had a thought of eating something while watching the porn? Has FBI ever storm your house to get you and your computer and have you thought to yourself: Dammit, I wish I could just eat that harddrive to prevent the agents from finding my treasured information? Well NOW YOU CAN!
Our latest line of products includes edible salmon drives, they will not only store your most 'important' data securely, but they taste like your favorite fish chips.
Buy NOW and get a bottle of this excellent Lemon Tartar Sauce absolutely FREE!
Buy 2 and get 1 free. We'll also throw in 2 crab memory sticks, an oyster mouse and a carp pad. ALL with just five easy payments of $19.99.
Order will not last, call now.
(void where prohibited, batteries not included).
You can't handle the truth.
Finally, that "Fish Farm" scene is starting to make a bit of sense.
nt
Sounds like the Salmon of knowledge is now in the digital age.
Good thing it's "WORM" and not "BUG" otherwise it might not have worked with RAID...
Douglas Adams doubts it will work
>Do you have any.... *.exe files?
>Go Fish.
Don't we already have caviar hard disks?
...is that if you're tired of your mother wondering if you're gay (or any friend or family member for that matter)....just buy a spindle of S-CDR's and leave them in the sun for a week.
"My my my...it smells like sex in here"
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Suddenly an Apple doesn't sound that bad...given the choice.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Both WORM and PROM are One-Time Programmables (OTP). In PROMs, you program the device once, and then you can read as many times from the same device. It's been used for decades in embedded products. Right now, they have pretty good densities - up to 1GB, IIRC. Dunno if they've gone higher than that. The number of companies that made mask ROMs have winnowed out, as have the number of OTP manufacturers. But that's the only thing that has slowed down the price erosion of such memories, which probably are already selling @ cost.
So the thing I'm trying to figure out here is - how is using salmon DNA going to make cheaper memories, particularly when salmon is not as abundant on earth as sand? In recent years, there have been attempts to look for alternatives to silicon - such as ferro-electric materials, or conductive polymers. But I don't see how the economics of such materials would be better than silicon. And in case of the latter, they are largely petroleum by-products, or can they be mass-produced synthetically?
As the scope of shrinking silicon hits the point of diminishing returns, it seems to me that the focus ought to be on either making silicon semiconductor manufacturing itself cheaper, or coming out w/ alternative solutions when die shrinks are not an option. At least not a cheap option.
I suspect there will be scaling issues!
We will all remember the day that melted butter and a spot of lemon juice entered the standard computer tech's toolkit.
Western Digital has been using this tech for years...
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=100
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