Laser-etched glass aims to store data for millennia
TL;DR Summary
Microsoft Cambridge researchers refined long-term data storage by encoding data as voxel patterns inside glass with a femtosecond laser. A 12 cm² piece of fused silica (~2 mm thick) can hold about 4.84 TB, read by automated microscopy and ML decoding, with write speed up to 65.9 million bits per second using four synchronized beams. The deformations are predicted to last over 10,000 years at room temperature, though the approach targets cloud-scale use rather than consumer devices due to cost and questions about future access to reading technology.
- Stone, parchment or laser-written glass? Scientists find new way to preserve data The Guardian
- Laser writing in glass for dense, fast and efficient archival data storage Nature
- Project Silica’s advances in glass storage technology featured in Nature Microsoft
- Microsoft’s Glass Chip Holds Terabytes of Data for 10,000 Years Gizmodo
- Microsoft’s new 10,000-year data storage medium: glass Ars Technica
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