Microsoft’s futuristic ‘Project Silica’ stores data on glass plates for 10,000 years

Imagine a world where you can store your data on a piece of glass thinner than a human hair that can last for thousands of years. That’s the vision of Microsoft’s «Project Silica,» an innovative technology that uses laser pulses to encode data in quartz glass.

Project Silica is part of Microsoft’s efforts to create new forms of storage that are more durable, sustainable and energy efficient than current solutions. The project is also motivated by the need to preserve the world’s digital heritage, which is at risk of being lost due to the degradation of traditional media such as hard drives, CDs and DVDs.

One of the main advantages of Project Silica is its longevity. According to Microsoft, the glass plates can withstand extreme temperatures, humidity, radiation and even physical damage without affecting the data. The company claims that the glass can retain data for up to 10,000 years, making it ideal for archiving historical records, cultural artifacts and scientific data.

Another benefit of Project Silica is its density. The glass plates can store up to 75 GB of data in a 2-inch square area, which is equivalent to about 150 DVDs. The data is encoded in multiple layers within the glass, each with a different angle and depth. To read the data, a special optical device scans the glass with a polarized light and decodes the patterns created by the laser pulses.

Project Silica is still in its early stages of development, but has already achieved some impressive milestones. In 2019, Microsoft partnered with Warner Bros. to store a copy of the classic movie ‘Superman’ (1978) on a glass plate. The project was a success and demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of the technology. Microsoft hopes to expand Project Silica and make it available for commercial use in the future.

The Silica Project is not only a technological innovation, but also a cultural one. It offers a new way to preserve and access our collective memory, which is essential to our identity and progress as a society. By storing data on glass plates, we can ensure that our digital legacy survives for generations to come.

Microsoft Research, the R&D division of the Redmond software giant, is exploring a new way to store massive amounts of data on glass plates in a groundbreaking initiative called «Project Silica.» This could enable long-term preservation of information for millennia without deterioration.

Data is encoded on the glass using three-dimensional pixels called voxels. Unlike conventional storage methods, such as magnetic spinning disks, Project Silica’s «saucer-sized glass plates will provide long-lasting, sustainable storage for the world,» as Microsoft puts it.

Magnetic storage, which is widely used, has disadvantages, according to Microsoft. Because of their limited lifespan, they need to be frequently recopied, which increases power consumption and operating costs over time: «A hard disk drive might last five years. A tape, well, if you’re brave, it could last ten years,» says Ant Rowstron, distinguished engineer at Project Silica.

Storing data on glass is not a new idea, says Microsoft. It dates back to the 19th century, when people stored individual photographic negatives on glass plates. However, Microsoft imagines a small glass disk that can hold several terabytes of data: about 1.75 million songs (approximately 13 years of music) could fit on a small glass disk. The goal of the Silica project is to write data into a glass and store it on a shelf until it is needed. The data inside the glass cannot be modified once written.