Battery-powered robot crabs, 4TB glass drives, and Hololens technology: a deep dive into Project Silica reveals how Microsoft doesn’t want petabyte-capacity quartz drives yet
The cover of the June 2024 issue of DataCenterDynamics (DCD) offers a fascinating and detailed look into the world of Project Silica, a Microsoft research initiative focused on developing a new storage technology that uses quartz glass as a medium for long-term data storage.
Microsoft’s vision for Project Silica comes at a time when the world is producing more data than traditional data storage solutions can effectively manage, a problem exacerbated by generative AI. Project Silica’s solution to this problem is to use femtosecond lasers to etch data into glass disks, creating distortions that can be read with a microscope. This method promises a storage lifespan of more than 10,000 years.
Richard Black, a key member of the Project Silica team, said DataCenterDynamics that it was clear that the short lifespan and high maintenance costs of current storage media were a problem. “We just realized that in the archive room we needed a better medium,” he said. The answer, it turned out, was glass.
“We have significantly increased the density”
Microsoft has been taking the femtosecond laser technology developed at Southampton University and improving it. While the team was able to achieve 4TB and 7TB densities, the focus of the project has since shifted to meet the specific needs of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. “We pushed the density quite a bit, eventually the Azure business asked us to stop,” he said. DCD.
Project Silica now integrates advanced AI and deep learning technologies to improve the accuracy and efficiency of data retrieval. This not only reduces the need for error correction, but also increases overall storage density. Data encrypted on these durable glass disks is virtually immutable, providing protection against tampering and ransomware threats.
One unusual aspect of Project Silica is the use of battery-powered robotic “crabs.” These robots (visible in the photo above) efficiently navigate the storage aisles to retrieve and deliver glass plates to reading stations. I’ve actually seen them in action, and they’re fast!
While the data writing stations currently require a lot of space, Black expects smaller production versions in the future. “When I first saw Hololens, it was much bigger than this,” he told Sebastian Moss, DCD’Microsoft’s editor-in-chief suggested potential scalability and the involvement of Microsoft’s optics-focused HoloLens team in refining the future technology.
Despite the ambitious scale of the project, Black and his team are maintaining a certain level of secrecy about the final specifications. However, the potential of Project Silica to redefine archival storage is clear.