• Microsoft’s Project Silica write-once storage could store terabytes of data for over 10,000 years - company explores two physical glass storage methods, so the glass-clad future of storage isn’t coming anytime soon Microsoft is working on two radically different mechanisms. • Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. • You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Microsoft Research has been working on Project Silica - a glass-like write-once storage device that can store terabytes of data for 10,000 years - for well over five years now, without making any promises about its commercialization or disclosing detailed technical information. • This week, the company finally detailed its mediums and end-to-end workflows in Nature, which is meant to confirm that the project is still under development, but without making any promises about commercialization. • The main concern around Project Silica is that Microsoft Research is now working in two different directions that rely on two fundamentally different physical mechanisms, which means that nothing is ready for prime time yet. • Two different writing methods The first method leverages the original Project Silica write-once read-many (WORM) storage solution and relies on fused silica medium and femtosecond laser pulses to create microscopic data points - voxels - stacked across hundreds of layers.

Article Summaries:

  • Microsoft’s Project Silica, a glass‑based write‑once storage system, has been detailed in a Nature paper after five years of research. The project can hold terabytes of data for more than 10,000 years, but it remains experimental with no commercialization timeline. Two distinct approaches are explored: (1) birefringent voxels written in fused silica using femtosecond laser pulses, yielding up to 4.8 TB per 120 mm × 120 mm × 2 mm platter and 25.6 Mbit/s read speed; (2) phase voxels in borosilicate glass, offering 2 TB per platter, 18.4 Mbit/s read speed, and higher energy efficiency. Each method uses a different optical readout, underscoring the project’s ongoing development.

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