Leading Japanese QC Firms/Government Band Together to Propel QC Systems’ Competitive Prospects

Using biological building blocks in place of traditional materials to assemble computers has been a research topic for many years, but recently the first potential commercial use cases have begun to emerge, centered on storage for large data sets. The DNA Storage Alliance, created to promote a storage ecosystem based on synthesized DNA strands, recently shared their aspirations for the emerging technology that offers significant promise in durability, simplicity, cost, and density over traditional magnetic counterparts. The initial goals of the alliance are to educate the public and raise awareness about DNA-based storage. Further out, the alliance may pursue the creation of specifications and standards, such as encoding, physical interfaces, retention, and file systems, to ensure that DNA-based solutions complement existing storage hierarchies. The alliance notes that expectations for the growth rate of current storage mechanisms cannot keep pace with the rising demand for data storage, particularly where growing data retention and related data mining efforts are driving the need to save increasingly larger data sets for longer periods of time. Such requirements are well suited to DNA-based archive storage characteristics in applications including digital content creation, robotics, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, astronomy, and climate science.

HPC datacenters have been improving their energy consumption and environmental sustainability profiles. Verne Global, a high-intensity-compute cloud colocation services provider, has emerged as a leader in delivering 100 percent renewable, global HPC cloud resources, powered by Iceland's natural hydroelectric and geothermal energy. Digital 9 Infrastructure plc (D9), a newly formed UK- based investment trust company that invests in a range of digital infrastructure assets, has acquired Verne Global in a deal valued at approximately £231 million.