Microsoft will store data in glass parallelepipeds – they will last for several millennia
Microsoft has announced a change in the priorities of the Silica project. Instead of archiving music and movies, Silica media and libraries will become the basis of Microsoft’s cloud storage centers. This will make it possible to quickly commercialize a solution for a resource-efficient method of archiving data on glass media that does not require time and environmental constraints, reports Tech News Space.
According to business experts, long-term data storage systems require hard drives to be replaced at least every 5 years, and tape media, “if you are not afraid to use them”– every 10 years.
The transfer of information involves costs and the risk of information loss. Glass media, on the other hand, is written once and can store data for at least 10,000 years, according to Microsoft.
Project Silica’s recording technology is still complex and multi-step. The data is recorded in a special system with the help of a powerful and fast laser, which step by step deforms the thickness of the glass, creating a continuous pattern of three-dimensional pixels – voxels.
Another setup with a powerful microscope and polarized light is used to read the sequence of voxels, which transmits the data to a computer.
Finally, the sequence of voxels and even their spatial location must be deciphered using a special algorithm so that the archive becomes a readable file.
Data on palm-sized silica glass wafers is extremely difficult to corrupt. They are fixed in the thickness of quartz glass and cannot be destroyed by radiation, light, magnetic pulses, water, fire or scratches.
Libraries based on glass plates are passive. They simply store records on special shelves, like books in a library. The required piece of glass is found and brought to the reader by a small robot that moves along the shelves.
However, new “permanent” libraries as part of Microsoft Azure cloud services will not appear soon. It will take at least three to four more generations of the platform before it reaches its commercial potential.
In the current design, each of these drives can store 7 TB of data. The capacity of the commercial solution may vary and will most likely be larger.
How to access thousands of free audiobooks thanks to artificial intelligence from Microsoft and Project Gutenberg – read on ProIT.
Subscribe to ProIT in Telegramso you don’t miss a post!