Microsoft's New 10,000-Year Data Storage Medium: Glass

Source: Slashdot

Project Silica Overview

Microsoft Research has published a paper in Nature detailing Project Silica, a working demonstration that uses femtosecond lasers to etch data into small slabs of glass. The technology achieves a data density of over 1 Gb per cubic millimeter and a maximum capacity of 4.84 TB per slab.

• Physical dimensions: each slab measures 12 cm × 12 cm and is 2 mm thick.
• Longevity: accelerated aging experiments suggest that data etched into the glass would remain stable for over 10,000 years at room temperature, requiring zero energy to preserve.

Writing and Reading Process

• Writing: Data is written by firing laser pulses that last just 10⁻¹⁵ seconds. These pulses create tiny features called voxels inside the glass, each capable of storing more than one bit.
• Reading: Retrieval is performed with phase‑contrast microscopy combined with a convolutional neural network trained to interpret the resulting images.

Performance

• Four lasers operating simultaneously achieve a write speed of 66 Mbit s⁻¹.
• Writing a full slab therefore takes over 150 hours. The research team believes that adding more lasers could significantly reduce this bottleneck.

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