Overview
- Microsoft’s Project Silica reports in Nature that it reliably wrote, read and decoded data as 3D voxels in glass, fitting 4.84 TB into a 12-square-centimetre, 2-millimetre-thick plate.
- Accelerated-aging tests at 290°C extrapolate data survival beyond 10,000 years, with the medium resistant to temperature shifts, moisture and electromagnetic interference.
- Data are written layer by layer with high-powered laser pulses and retrieved via a specialized microscope and AI-driven decoding.
- The latest work extends writing to common borosilicate glass and introduces parallel writing and phase-voxel techniques, though current write speed is about 3.13 MB/s across 301 layers.
- Researchers and outside experts caution that practical challenges remain, including vulnerability to breakage or chemicals, slow throughput, mass production, and ensuring future accessibility.