DNA Breakthrough Means Endless Storage Potential

An incredible new breakthrough in the most advanced computer hard drive technology currently being researched has seen the creation of a genetic storage device, which has thus far been able to download all of Shakespeare’s sonnets onto strands of manmade DNA, alongside a short excerpt of Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. The scientists working on the technology were then able to re-download the information and decode it perfectly, reproducing Shakespeare’s work accurately. Turning information like this into synthetic DNA which can be decoded later is a huge breakthrough in the world of technology and could lead to unimaginably advanced computer memory systems in the future.

It is thought that the results of the landmark study, a collaboration between British scientists and a company based in California, could eventually lead to computer storage solutions that could store 100 million hours of HD video in a mass of synthetic DNA no bigger than a cup. The devices could theoretically store every single film and television programme that has ever been created, and so the possibilities for the future of this technology are endless. 

Aside from the obvious and incredible advantages of being able to store vast amounts of information on a minuscule surface, the solution also has great advantages over its main competitor, magnetic tape. This type of memory solution will degrade within a decade, whereas the DNA memory being mooted as a potential replacement now can last for many thousands of years, existing on no constant power source in the way that computer hard disks do now. The reasoning behind the experimental techniques was that scientists knew that DNA was a secure and robust way to store information that would last until the next age; in the same way that scientists now can extract DNA information from the bones of woolly mammoths or other prehistoric creatures, scientists in the future will be able to decode this DNA and find Shakespeare’s sonnets or Martin Luther King’s speech.

It is predicted that in ten years, more efficient and cheap DNA sequencing could make this type of storage a real solution for PC and Apple computers, while the future of synthetic DNA storage will see incredibly rich archives of data storage for time periods of thousands of years on tiny strands of manmade genetic material. In a few hundred years, every human could have access to every video clip or song ever made at the touch of a button or the click of a finger, all due to this incredible innovation in DNA and computer technology.

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Apple vs Samsung Looks Set To Continue

Samsung has this year announced plans to target the Chinese market, as well as other smartphone manufacturers, in an effort to bulk up their orders after losing out to their main competitor, Apple. The company, based in South Korea, is among the world’s largest suppliers of mobile processors, which power their own range of Samsung tablets and smartphones, but powered the memory and other components behind iPads and iPhones until very recently. A huge dispute over patents, which has seen numerous high-profile court cases hit the news, has seen Apple start to lessen their reliance on Samsung products, including memory chips and display screens for handheld devices.

The strange situation saw Samsung’s biggest rival become its biggest customer.  It saw them collaborate on some of the most successful handheld devices in recent years with both of their products accounting for more than half of the global smartphone market. Indeed, statistics show Samsung has outsold Apple in every quarter except those in which Apple launched a new product, except for the recent iPhone 5 when, despite the often fever-pitch excitement which comes with an Apple product launch, Samsung managed to sell more units in the last quarter of 2012.

However concerns have arisen among many experts that Samsung, which also produces computer memory and a variety of electronic devices such as cameras and televisions, may now see revenues fall as Apple withdraws their demands. Stephen Woo, the president of Samsung’s System LSI business, has stated that bolstering their key relationships with chipmakers and clients in China will be a vital aspect of staying ahead of the curve. Diversifying their customer base rather than relying on one huge client which could withdraw its demands entirely at any time is an important step towards ensuring Samsung’s dominance in the market.

Samsung is also looking towards their IT systems in order to face down the challenges of remaining a market leader. Their PC memory devices can deliver substantial gains for the brand, their green memory solutions are able to operate rapidly while running at a much lower electricity percentage, while advanced DRAM and solid-state drives address company needs for powerful processing capabilities. Samsung is also looking towards taking the technology used in creating the screen used for iPod and iPad devices and implementing them within their range of LCD television, which consistently sell well. Improving in other areas will make Samsung a stronger business overall, but the conflict between Apple and Samsung, once collaborators and now on rocky ground, looks set to rumble on.

To find out more about the Apple memory and computer memory solutions from Data Memory Systems and to buy online, visit http://www.datamemorysystems.com

What Is A Solid-State Drive?

Many new, modern laptops come fully equipped with what is known as a solid-state drive, or an SSD. Having been around for some time, this method of computer storage has only recently come to the fore as a viable and effective alternative to the traditional hard drive. Now they are one of the most popular storage devices and they are starting to become standard in many new laptops and computers on the market.

But what is the difference between an SSD and a standard hard drive? The largest difference between the two computer memory solutions is that SSDs aren’t actually hard drives at all, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. They contain no moving parts and operate through semiconductor memory and integrated circuits rather than the magnetic options used in standard hard drives. This shift away from moving parts has many advantages, the first being that data transfer between SSDs and other devices is much faster than hard drives which use moving parts to read or write data.

Latency and transfer times are vastly reduced. Latency has been compared with attempting to find a passage in a certain book; this process of searching for data across a drive is much easier with an SSD. The transfer time can be likened to how fast one can read said passage once it has been accessed. Once the data has been found on the drive, how long does it take before it available to view or edit? Boot times are also reduced, and without moving parts in a device, there is much less chance for damage or malfunction. They can’t break or wear down, but they do have a finite number of write cycles before the SSDs performance starts to dip.

It has been the rapidly expanding need for higher performance levels that has driven the development of the SSD in recent years. Real-time information is a requirement for many name, and a large number of business and even leisure users of laptops and computers need to be able to access data instantly. The only stumbling block in the past was the price; being harder to manufacture, the SSD was originally much more expensive than a hard drive, and many experts said that the product wasn’t worth the price. But now improvements in technology have facilitated a price drop in SSDs, causing mass re-evaluation of the drives as a viable alternative to their existing computer memory.