IEEE Spectrum May 29, 2020
Optical data storage was demonstrated in 2013 by researchers in UK. Under Project Silica, last November Microsoft completed its first proof of concept by writing the 1978 film Superman on a single small piece of glass and retrieving it. Researchers could theoretically store up to 360 terabytes of data on a disc the size of a DVD. The laser’s pulse deforms the glass at its focal point, forming a tiny 3D structure called a voxel makes it possible to represent several bits of data per voxel. Reading data from the glass requires an entirely different setup, which is one potential drawback of this method. The Microsoft group has added error-correcting codes to improve the system’s accuracy and continues to refine its machine-learning algorithms to automate the read-back process, and has increased the writing speeds several orders of magnitude…read more. Video