Overview
- Microsoft’s Nature paper demonstrates up to 4.84 TB stored in a 12 cm by 12 cm by 2 mm borosilicate glass slab, with data written in hundreds of internal layers.
- Accelerated‑aging tests project at least 10,000 years of readability, and the medium requires no power and resists temperature swings, moisture, and electromagnetic interference.
- The team shifted from costly fused silica to widely available borosilicate glass, simplified the reader to a single camera, and introduced single‑pulse “phase voxels.”
- Parallel multi‑beam writing reached about 66 megabits per second with four lasers—roughly 150 hours to fill a 4.84 TB slab—highlighting throughput as a key limitation.
- Microsoft says the research phase is complete with no product timeline announced, and independent experts laud the archival promise while flagging scale‑up and future accessibility challenges.