Microsoft Advances Glass Storage With Project Silica

Microsoft's Project Silica research demonstrates 2 TB of data written in hundreds of layers within a 2 mm borosilicate glass plate using femtosecond laser pulses and machine-learning readers. The project promises millennia-scale archival durability but faces severe practical hurdles, including 20 Mbps per-beam write speeds, decoding complexity, and limited commercial pathways. Analysts say the technology could aid ultra-long-term archives but is unlikely to scale to cloud-wide deployment soon.