uncategorized

Microsoft's futuristic 'Project Silica' stores data on glass plates for 10.000 years

Microsoft

Imagine a world where you can store your data on a piece of glass thinner than a human hair and it can last for thousands of years. That is the vision of the “Silica Project” of Microsoft, an innovative technology that uses laser pulses to encode data into quartz glass.

Microsoft
Microsoft

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, glass plates can withstand extreme temperatures, humidity, radiation, and even physical damage without affecting data. The company claims that 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 the Silica Project is its density. The glass plates can store up to 75 GB of data in a 2-square-inch 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 crystal with polarized light and decodes the patterns created by the laser pulses.

The Silica Project 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 viability 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 an innovative initiative called "Project Silica." This could allow long-term preservation of information for millennia without deterioration.

Data is encoded in the crystal using three-dimensional pixels called voxels. Unlike conventional storage methods such as magnetic spinning disks, Project Silica's “saucer-sized glass plates will offer long-lasting, sustainable storage for the world,” as Microsoft says.

Widely used magnetic storage has disadvantages, according to Microsoft. Due to their limited lifespan, they need to be copied frequently, increasing power consumption and operating costs over time: “A hard drive can last five years. A tape, well, if you're brave, it could last ten years,” says Ant Rowstron, Distinguished Engineer of the Silica Project.

Storing data on glass is not a new idea, says Microsoft. This dates back to the 1,75th century, when people stored individual photographic negatives on glass plates. However, Microsoft envisions a small glass disk that can hold several terabytes of data: around 13 million songs (about XNUMX years of music) could fit on a small glass disk. The goal of the Silica project is to write data to a glass and store it on a shelf until it is needed. The data inside the crystal cannot be modified once written.