Video: Former IBMer Dave Turek Explains DNA-based Storage and its Place in the Compute Landscape to Come

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New compute architectures, with the potential to propel systems power forward even as Moore’s Law winds down, are emerging — a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “technology disaggregation.” Hence the explosive growth of accelerated CPU/GPU-based computing within the von Neumann domain and the intensive activity and investment in quantum. While classical von Neumann computing will remain at the HPC center, it’s expected to be complemented by new architectures in specialized, super-powered roles.

One of the emerging architectures is DNA-based storage and computation, something we admit to not having heard of until about 10 days ago. That’s when the news broke that IBM’s long-time HPC strategist, Dave Turek, had retired from the company and had joined Boston-based start-up Catalog, a DNA-based technology company, as CTO.

Responding to our coverage of Turek’s move, industry analyst Addison Snell of Intersect360 tweeted: “If Dave is there, I’m listening.” Here’s more of Turek to listen to – in this interview, he explains the basics of DNA-based storage, its timetable for commercial availability, workloads that are its natural fit and the place it will take the HPC firmament of the future.