Microsoft has proven that we can store data on glass, a technology we still know is feasible but have not seen any "tech giants" dare to affirm success. Microsoft researchers teamed up with renowned studio Warner Bros. to execute this incredible project: containing the landmark of the cinema, the 1978 Superman film, into a piece of glass measuring 75x75x2 mm.
Microsoft Research is the place to come up with this idea and execute it successfully. The group is part of Microsoft's billions of dollars in search of new storage technologies that will serve as a solid springboard for the Azure platform in the future.
"We have built this whole system successfully thanks to the new cold storage technology," Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said on the stage of the Ignite conference. Microsoft only uses ordinary quartz, but the glass still withstands high temperatures and is scratch resistant. This new research project has a full "codename", Project Silica, focusing solely on developing data storage and storage technologies.
Ever since the data exists, the human race has struggled to save it and pass it on to the next generation. But books can rot, photos fade over time, and hard drives aren't even a way to securely store digital data. Researchers have had this problem for a long time and Microsoft is not the first unit to test data storage on glass.
But Google's statement makes us believe in a successful future of new data storage. Warner Bros has trusted them to permanently store digital assets, with copies that do not fade over time.
Entertainment companies now create backups by converting digital movies into similar films, dividing them into three parts with three colors - cyan, magenta. and yellow, then turn each of these into black and white negative films as they won't fade like digital color films.
These negatives will be stored in cold vaults with tightly controlled temperatures and humidity, plus a chemical sensor system that can "smell" any chemical changes. may be damaged. Will have to reverse the complex steps just mentioned to return to the perfect movie.
This is an expensive and costly process, and Microsoft wants to shorten movie storage time, bypassing the cumbersome and expensive process. If the Silica Project solution is successful at a low cost and on a large scale - we also understand that these are just early days of testing - we expect other studios, other companies and industries. Another would: use this technology, Vicky Colf, chief technology officer of Warner Bros. talk. "If successful, I think this technology will benefit anyone who wants to preserve and store any content."
Microsoft uses infrared lasers to encode data into "voxels" - similar to pixels on your screen, but different in that it has three dimensions. The data will be in the glass and machine learning algorithms will decipher what is in the glass to retrieve the data.
Currently, Microsoft is still testing this technology and has just published scientific reports. If they succeed, we will probably build an undersea data storage and processing center.
