Long-term data archiving in quartz glass discs
Data in 5D Optical Memory is intended to last for millennia. The US company SPhotonix is thus competing against rivals such as Cerabyte and Microsoft.
At SPhotonix 5D Optical Memory, a femtosecond laser structures voxels in a quartz glass plate.
(Image: SPhotonix)
Can data be stored for millennia? The 5D Optical Memory developed by the company SPhotonix is at least the third method for long-term data archiving in or on small glass plates. SPhotonix aims to bring a process to market that Professor Peter Kazansky from the British University of Southampton has been working on for around 20 years.
5D Optical Memory competes with Cerabyte's technology and Microsoft's Project Silica, among others. All three approaches use glass plates and femtosecond lasers for writing data. However, while Cerabyte's laser burns the data into a wafer-thin ceramic layer on the top of the glass plate, both 5D Optical Memory and Project Silica use the volume of the quartz glass.
Licensing the technology as a goal
SPhotonix calls its process 5D Optical Memory because it works with three-dimensional voxels (X, Y, and Z axes) and evaluates two optical properties of the birefringent voxels: the axis of light refraction and the intensity of the light.
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In the current development phase, SPhotonix works with round quartz glass discs with a diameter of 2.5 centimeters. The series product is intended to store up to 360 terabytes on square discs with an edge length of 12.7 centimeters (5 inches).
SPhotonix does not intend to bring finished read/write devices and storage media to market itself, but sees itself as a development company. The technology is to be licensed to other companies.
Comparison with Cerabyte
(Image:Â Lutz Labs / heise medien)
Cerabyte also relies on square glass plates, but with an edge length of 9.5 centimeters. The ceramic coating on these so-called sheets is only about 10 nanometers thick. The storage density per sheet aimed for by Cerabyte is significantly lower than with 5D optical Memory, but the data stored on the surface should be readable with the technique of light microscopes. In addition, around 180 sheets fit into a cassette that has approximately the dimensions of today's LTO tape cassette.
Microsoft Project Silica also plans automated archiving systems equipped with thousands of quartz glass plates. As early as 2012, Hitachi had published work on a long-term storage method using quartz glass plates (Fused Silica).
(ciw)
