Microsoft’s Project Silica is making groundbreaking strides in data storage. It employs state of the art laser technology to record data on glass, ensuring unmatched durability and storage. This pioneering project addresses the shortcomings of traditional electronic modes of data storage. It continues to pursue the offer of one potential solution—preservation in DNA—that could preserve human data for thousands of years.
Project Silica taps femtosecond lasers, which blow open digital storage capacity with intense pulses that last only quadrillionths of a second. These lasers encode information as microscopic three-dimensional voxels sealed in glass. Each voxel is about 0.5 micrometers in each direction, and thus, the distance between neighboring voxels is at least about 6 micrometers. The power of this technology lies in the ability to encode tremendous quantities of data into a small physical object with great accuracy. A single data chip, 12 square centimeters and 2 millimeters deep, can store a remarkable 4.84 terabytes of information. That’s the same as roughly 2 million printed books or 5,000 UHD 4K movies!
Project Silica’s efficiency potentially skyrockets with its ability to write data at speeds up to 25.6 megabits per second. That remarkable velocity is accomplished with only one beam. Richard Black, a researcher associated with the project, highlighted the significance of this advancement: “This significantly reduces the power required from the laser to store data, and it does not require the laser focus to alternate between staying in the same place to deliver multiple pulses and movement to the next location.”
Perhaps the most fascinating part of Project Silica is its stratospheric future-proof data readability. Data stored in this glass medium can be kept readable for more than 10 millennia at 290 °C. Even more impressively, when stored in ambient temperature, the lifespan of the data could reach well over the 3,400-year mark. Black pointed out that “at room temperature, glass is effectively a solid and does not flow on any meaningful timescale,” reinforcing the material’s suitability for archival purposes.
Microsoft’s Project Silica primarily employs two types of voxels: phase voxels and birefringent voxels. This dual approach creates a code that is incredibly data efficient. It further ensures delivery of the integrity of the information over decades. The project’s design caters specifically to “archival—anywhere data must survive for centuries such as national libraries, scientific data, or cultural records,” according to Black.
The implications of Project Silica are far-reaching, especially in an age where data preservation is more important than ever before. As digital information increasingly expands, finding trustworthy long-term storage solutions is increasingly pressing and immediate. Microsoft combines the amazing permanence of glass with cutting edge Microsoft laser technology to make truly innovative surfaces. With this invention, they hope to raise the bar in the archival data business.