Microsoft Research recently published its latest research findings in the top international academic journal 'Nature', officially unveiling the glass three-dimensional optical storage technology codenamed "Project Silica". This technology achieves a data storage capacity of 4.8TB on a single square glass disc measuring 12 centimeters wide and 2 millimeters thick, equivalent to the information content of approximately 2 million printed books.
Technical Principle: Femtosecond Laser Writes Nanoscale Voxels, Machine Learning Aids Reading
The technology utilizes a femtosecond laser to write nanoscale three-dimensional voxel structures inside the glass, encoding data by altering the optical refractive index and polarization state. During reading, it employs machine learning algorithms and intelligent error correction systems to achieve high-precision data recovery. Its data density reaches 1.59Gbit/mm³, providing a new physical medium foundation for long-term, massive-scale storage.
Industry Pain Point: Existing Storage Media Struggle to Meet Long-term Archiving Needs
The paper points out that global data volume is growing exponentially, roughly doubling every three years. A significant portion of this data holds personal, commercial, or legal value and needs to be preserved for decades or even centuries. However, existing digital archiving systems face severe challenges: traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) have high energy consumption and limited lifespan; solid-state drives (SSDs) rely on scarce wafer resources and lack long-term preservation reliability; while tape libraries are lower cost, they suffer from low read/write efficiency. The industry has long lacked an ideal solution that balances high capacity, high durability, and low cost.
Core Advantages: Thermal Stability, Interference Resistance, Room Temperature Preservation for Over 10,000 Years
Unlike traditional magnetic or flash memory media, glass storage relies on the physical stability of inorganic silicate materials, offering characteristics such as thermal stability, chemical stability, moisture resistance, temperature change resistance, and electromagnetic interference resistance. According to Microsoft, accelerated aging tests have verified that data can be safely preserved for over 10,000 years at room temperature; even under high-temperature conditions of 290°C, it can remain stable for millennia. This characteristic effectively addresses the long-term archiving challenges of traditional media, which are prone to moisture damage, demagnetization, and aging failure.
Market Background: AI Computing Demand Triggers Storage Price Surge
The global storage market is currently experiencing a historic price surge. The explosive demand for AI computing power is driving up prices for DRAM and NAND flash memory, with enterprise-grade SSD prices increasing by over 60% year-on-year and consumer-grade storage product prices doubling. Supply chain tensions are expected to persist until 2028. Data centers and various institutional users face continuously rising operational costs. Against this backdrop, Microsoft's newly developed glass storage technology offers a new direction for breaking the industry's deadlock.
Application Scenarios: Targeting Long-term Archiving of Cold Data
Currently, the write speed of this technology is approximately 8.25MB/s, requiring over 150 hours to fully write a single glass disc. Therefore, it is more suitable for massive cold data scenarios where frequent rewriting is unnecessary, such as in archives, libraries, financial institutions, and cloud service providers. MIT bioengineer Mark Bathe commented that this glass-based alternative "in principle could serve as a near-permanent archival storage for critical data backups."
Real-world Bottlenecks: High Cost, Immature Industry Chain
Despite the promising technological prospects, this technology still faces significant bottlenecks. High-precision laser read/write equipment is extremely costly, and specialized glass and optical components require customization, making the deployment cost of an entire system reach tens of millions of yuan, which is unaffordable for small and medium-sized enterprises. Coupled with an immature industry chain, it is expected that related products will be difficult to achieve mass production and widespread adoption in the short term.
