Beyond the Hard Drive Microsoft Hits New Milestone in Borosilicate Glass Storage.
Microsoft Research has unveiled a significant breakthrough in Project Silica, its ambitious long-term data storage initiative first introduced in 2019. This latest update marks a pivot toward commercial viability and unprecedented durability, pushing the boundaries of how humanity preserves its digital heritage.
From Rare Quartz to Everyday Glass
A major shift in the project’s strategy involves the transition from expensive, high-purity quartz glass to borosilicate glass. This material, commonly used in high-quality glassware and laboratory equipment, is far more abundant and cost-effective, significantly lowering the barrier for large-scale commercial adoption.
Parallel Writing and Eternal Preservation
The technology has also evolved in its data-writing process. By utilizing parallel multi-beam laser technology, researchers can now encode data onto the glass plates more efficiently. This advancement has extended the projected lifespan of the stored data from hundreds of years to a staggering 10,000 years. Additionally, the hardware infrastructure required for this system has been streamlined, resulting in faster data retrieval speeds and reduced operational complexity.
For more details, see the research published in Nature.
- The most remarkable aspect of Project Silica is that once data is written to the glass, it requires no electrical power to maintain the data (passive storage), unlike hard drives or magnetic tapes that require data migration every 10 years. This makes it incredibly environmentally friendly.
- Research indicates that these glass panels are extremely durable, able to withstand boiling water, microwaving, or even scrubbing with steel wool without the data remaining intact. This makes them ideal for a global emergency data backup system.
- In the year 2026, when AI generates massive amounts of data that data centers will struggle to cope, Project Silica becomes a new hope for storing "raw data" that isn't frequently accessed but is highly important. A single palm-sized glass panel could store hundreds of terabytes of data.
- The data on the glass panel is stored in the form of voxels (3D pixels), which are nano-sized etched patterns created within the glass using a femtosecond laser. This makes data forgery or deletion extremely difficult, ensuring data integrity.
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Source: Microsoft Research
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