Is it possible to design a sustainable data storage system? Traditional devices, such as hard disks and magnetic tapes, require frequent copying and are characterized by a limited lifespan and a clear environmental cost. The increase in storage needs therefore promotes the use of new materials, capable of overcoming the limits of magnetic technology.
The work of Project Silica, a cutting-edge initiative by Microsoft Research, fits into this perspective.
The potential of glass
The project focuses on the use of silica-based glass plates to facilitate long-term data storage. Today, a glass plate the size of a coaster is capable of “holding several terabytes of data, enough to store approximately 1,75 million songs” and keep them for dozens of thousands of years.
Glass, an extremely durable material, offers one efficient, green and compact cloud storage space, where the information is transcribed in such a way as to be unchangeable.
The phases of the data archiving process
Project Silica collaborates with the Microsoft Azure team to exploit the potential ofartificial intelligence in order to "decode the data stored in the glass, making reading and writing faster" and promoting massive storage of information.
But how do you store data in the glass? Through a process consisting of four phases:
- writing: the pulses emitted by a laser modify the glass, storing the data inside it as voxels (three-dimensional pixels);
- reading: the data is decoded thanks to a computer-controlled microscope;
- decodes: the information stored inside the glass is processed in order to decipher the symbols;
- storage in a library. The latter does not require electricity, since the complexity of this phase of the process lies entirely in the robot who move between the shelves of the laboratory to retrieve the requested glass and bring it to the reader.
Thanks to glass, data centers will cease to be large infrastructures, with high maintenance costs, and will acquire a compact shape, synthesis of efficiency and sustainability.
To date, glass storage is still under development, but this technology lends itself to becoming one of the pillars of Azure in the world. According to researchers, this storage solution results ideal for libraries, film archives, state archives and other entities that need to freeze data over time, without modifying them.
Find out more about Project Silica thanks to video produced by Microsoft.
Sources: unlocked.microsoft.com, macitynet.it
