DNAContainer: An object-based storage architecture on DNA

Abstract

The digital data volumes produced worldwide per year are ever-increasing. Estimates show that by 2025, we will have reached 175 zettabytes of globally created digital data. Despite today's advancements in storage devices, current database management systems cannot cope with these amounts of data. More than recent improvements in storage technologies are needed to meet the ever-accelerating growth of generated data. This problem is further exaggerated when considering that current storage technologies such as HDD and tape require replacement every few years. To combat this deficiency, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) offers a novel durable (millennia scale), extremely dense, and energy-efficient storage medium. However, current DNA systems lack support for random access and more expressive query support beyond key-value lookups. In this paper, we present DNAContainer, a novel storage architecture on DNA that spans an ample virtual address space on objects, enabling random access to DNA at a large scale while adhering to required biochemical constraints. The interface of DNAContainer also facilitates the implementation of common external data structures such as arrays, lists, and trees that store data in blocks of fixed size.