REDMOND, WASHINGTON — Humanity is producing data at an exponential rate, prompting scientists to seek out storage systems that can keep up. <br /> <br />MIT Review reports that data is commonly archived using magnetic tape, which can hold as much as a terabyte per roll for up to 30 years. But conventional storage capabilities may not be sufficient for long. <br /> <br />Microsoft is now looking to DNA as a means to store digital data. DNA is more dense, and can hold a quintillion bytes of information in one cubic millimeter. It also has a half life of up to 500 years, according to the tech giant. <br /> <br />In its demonstration project in 2016, the company managed to encode 100 literary classics, or roughly 200 megabytes of data into DNA’s four bases. <br /> <br />But with the technology still in the early stages, converting digital bits into DNA code remains both slow and expensive. <br /> <br />Microsoft aims to have a DNA storage system in place for at least one application in three years. The ambitious end game, however, is for DNA to be the go-to for data archiving.
