Breakthrough in Glass Storage Microsoft Uses Borosilicate Glass for Commercial Use

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As early as 2019, Microsoft drew attention to the topic of glass storage. At that time, researchers still used expensive quartz glass. Now, there is a more affordable option for storing data for up to 10,000 years.

Microsoft has reached an important milestone with its Project Silica. As the company recently announced, data can now be stored in ordinary borosilicate glass for more than 10,000 years. This marks a significant step towards the commercialization of the technology, which previously relied on expensive quartz glass.

From Research to Practical Application

As early as 2019, Microsoft, together with Warner Bros., stored an entire film on a "glass coaster." At that time, the team used quartz glass, a material that is indeed optimal for data storage but comes with high costs and limited availability.

The current breakthrough lies in the researchers successfully transferring the technology to borosilicate glass. This heat-resistant material is not only significantly more cost-effective but also available in large quantities. This fulfills two critical requirements for industrial use. The team continues to use femtosecond lasers to write data as three-dimensional pixels, known as voxels, into the glass.

Impressive Performance Data

In the latest demonstration, Microsoft's team stored 4.8 terabytes of data—equivalent to around 200 4K movies—on 301 layers in a glass piece measuring 0.08 × 4.7 inches. The writing speed ranged between 18.4 and 65.9 megabits per second, depending on the number of laser beams used. These figures are particularly remarkable when compared to other glass storage technologies. For instance, researchers at the University of Southampton developed a 5D glass storage technology that can theoretically store 500 terabytes on a CD-sized glass disc but writes at only 230 kilobytes per second.

The Microsoft researchers have achieved several key technical breakthroughs:

• Pseudo-single-laser pulse technology: Instead of two pulses, only one pulse is now needed for data encoding.
• Parallel writing: Multiple laser beams work simultaneously to increase speed.
• Phase voxel storage method: A new method that also requires only a single pulse.
• Aging detection: Techniques for reading data and identifying aging processes in the glass.

These advancements significantly increase the efficiency of data storage while reducing production costs. Particularly, the reduction to a single laser pulse per voxel greatly simplifies and accelerates the writing process.

Advantages Over Conventional Storage Systems

As previously reported in quartz glass storing data for over a million years, glass storage technology offers significant advantages over conventional storage media. Its extreme durability of over 10,000 years without data loss far surpasses all other available technologies. At the same time, the medium is resistant to temperature, humidity, and electromagnetic interference, eliminating the need for expensive climate-controlled data centers.

A particular security aspect lies in the fact that the storage is physically unhackable. Overwriting or manipulating the data is practically impossible without the specialized laser hardware. This makes the technology particularly interesting for critical archiving tasks such as research, law, or compliance.

Obstacles Remain

Despite the significant progress, experts still see hurdles on the path to widespread commercial application. The writing speed is still too slow for certain applications, and scaling the manufacturing processes for mass production remains a challenge. Additionally, the question of long-term accessibility arises: how can it be ensured that the technology to read the data will still be available after centuries or millennia?

The development at Microsoft aligns with a larger trend: from the storage of the human genome on eternally durable crystal storage to 5D storage that lasts forever. Research into alternative storage technologies is intensifying in response to exponentially growing data volumes and the need for sustainable solutions.

By switching to cost-effective borosilicate glass, Microsoft may have taken a crucial step toward commercializing its glass storage technology. For industries, this could mean a sustainable solution for the long-term archiving of critical data, ranging from research data to digital archives and compliance documents. The technology could not only revolutionize data archiving but also make an important contribution to sustainability through reduced energy consumption compared to traditional data centers. (heh)