Cryptocurrency, Quantum computers, AI, Electric vehicles… What’s next?

While doing some research on processing data using unconventional platforms and methods such as quantum computers, a ternary numerical system, cellular automata, amorphous processing, and many others, I came across an interesting method that has been around us, ever since we were born, but we only started to realize it’s potential around the 1960s and is now probably one of the hottest topics. It’s DNA — a molecule that carries genetic information in all living organisms, including us humans. This post discusses some practical aspects, of how DNA can be utilized in nowadays computer systems to extend their capabilities.

I don’t think I have to talk about what kind of an abundance of data we have today. I’m referring to logs, big data sets, different records (blockchain), and so on. Some forecasts even predict we will reach approx. 6–19 yottabytes of data by 2040. Yotta is like 10²⁴! — that’s huge. Do you ever ask yourself where all this chunk is stored? An obvious answer would be data centers, where multiple servers reside that enables us to persist large sum of data over a long period. But these are hard to maintain, not only do you need a lot of space but you also need to provide sufficient cooling, energy consumption is high, etc. Can we do something about it?

Recent studies show that instead of storing and processing data in classical electrical circuits that are based on semiconductors, we could potentially transition to use a biological medium that is composed…