Microsoft’s new way of storing data for thousands of years without it degrading. This new technology is going to change the way of storing huge amounts of old data. Here in this post, we are going to know everything about Microsoft Project Silica and how data are going to store in a piece of Glass.
What is Microsoft Project Silica?
Microsoft Project Silica is developing a new way of storing device to store huge amount of data into a piece of Silica Glass.
A laser burns multiple bits of data on to quartz glass, which emits images and patterns when polarized light is shone through.
Artificial intelligence can read these in order to retrieve and play the data. Machine learning algorithms read the data by decoding images and patterns that are created as polarized light shines through the glass.
The Project Silica must work because it’s been tested successfully by storing the entire 1978 iconic “Superman” movie on a piece of glass having a size roughly around 75 by 75 by 2 millimeters thick.
How much it is expensive to store data in Silica Glass?
At the moment Warner Bros moves content every three years to keep it in good condition. They face a constant battle to transfer data on to newer types of storage before the information is lost, or the formats become obsolete. It keeps three copies of each piece of content stored in different locations around the world. Two of these are digital copies, while the other is the original saved on whatever medium it was created on –for example, celluloid film.
Silica glass is cheaper for storing our data because you need to save the data to glass just once. The changes the lasers make to the structure of glass last forever.
In previous years, media companies preserved physical content such as film reels by digitizing it. Now that most content is created digitally, they’re looking for ways of storing it physically.
Currently, Warner Bros does this by converting it to analog film. It splits footage into cyan, magenta, and yellow then transfers each color on to black-and-white film negatives. These are kept in tightly controlled vaults where air-detection devices look for signs of chemical decomposition.
How much it is safe to store data in a piece of Silica Glass?
On a piece of Silica glass measuring 7.5cm x7.5cm x 2mm – roughly the size of a drinks coaster. Unlike fragile wine glasses or light bulbs, it’s surprisingly difficult to destroy.
Apparently, In a blog post, Microsoft says it could be “boiled in hot water, baked in an oven, microwaved, flooded, scoured, demagnetized” without damage. It doesn’t mention Kryptonite, but we bet it would cope with that also.
At last, Microsoft researcher Ant Rowstron says that we cannot use Silica glass for storing our everyday data like images or videos. It’s being built on a much bigger scale, aiming to preserve “cold data”, which is information that may have huge value or needs to be maintained by law but doesn’t need to be regularly accessed. This may include medical data or legal contracts, but not videos of your weekend break in Rome.
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