from the what-is-the-read/write-speed? dept.
Why Microsoft and Warner Bros. Archived the Original 'Superman' Movie on a Futuristic Glass Disc
Microsoft has teamed up with Warner Bros. to store a copy of the 1978 movie "Superman" on a small glass disc about the size of a coaster. The collaboration, which will be officially unveiled at Microsoft's Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida Monday, is a first test case for a new storage technology that could eventually help safeguard Hollywood's movies and TV shows, as well as many other forms of data, for centuries to come.
"Glass has a very, very long lifetime," said Microsoft Research principal researcher Ant Rowstron in a recent conversation with Variety. "Thousands of years."
[Image] The piece of silica glass storing the 1978 "Superman" movie, measuring 7.5 cm x 7.5 cm x 2 mm. The glass contains 75.6 GB of data plus error redundancy codes.
Microsoft began to investigate glass as a storage medium in 2016 in partnership with the University of Southampton Optoelectonics Research Centre. The goal of these efforts, dubbed "Project Silica," is to find a new storage medium optimized for what industry insiders like to call cold data — the type of data you likely won't need to access for months, years, or even decades. It's data that doesn't need to sit on a server, ready to be used 24/7, but that is kept in a vault, away from anything that could corrupt it.
This is not the Superman memory crystal we need.
Also at The Verge.
Related: "5D" Laser-Based Polarization Vortex Storage Could Hold Hundreds of Terabytes for Billions of Years
Related Stories
Researchers at the UK's Southampton University have created a storage scheme that could supposedly store hundreds of terabytes for billions of years:
Researchers, led by Martynas Beresna, in the university's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have built five-dimensional photonic structures in nano-structured fuzed quartz glass with femtosecond pulses of light; meaning one quadrillionth (one millionth of one billionth) of a second. Data is written in three layers of nano-structured dots, voxels, separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre).
A voxel is an optical vortex, a polarisation vortex using nano-gratings, and a paper by the researchers, "Radially polarized optical vortex converter created by femtosecond laser nanostructuring of glass" (pdf), explains how they: "...demonstrate a polarization vortex converter, which produces radially or azimuthally polarized visible vortices from a circularly polarized beam, using femtosecond laser imprinting of space-variant self-assembled form birefringence in silica glass."
When the femtolaser pulse hits the glass it causes polarisation vortices to be created which change the way light passes through the glass, modifying its polarisation. This polarisation can be detected using a combined optical microscope and polariser. The dimensions of the three-layered nano-structured dot voxel are length, width, depth, size and orientation.
We're told an optical disk, using this technology, could hold 360TB of data for 13.8 billion years at 190°C, meaning a virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature. [...] Altechna, a Lithuanian laser optics company, is working on commercialising the technology.
This story is a bit of a throwback since the researchers originally published these claims back in 2013. However they are presenting their results under the title "Eternal 5D data storage by ultrafast laser writing in glass" on February 17, 2016 at the SPIE Photonics West 2016 conference in San Francisco.
5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Nanostructuring in Glass
High-Speed Laser Writing Method Could Pack 500 Terabytes of Data into CD-Sized Glass Disc
Researchers have developed a fast and energy-efficient laser-writing method for producing high-density nanostructures in silica glass. These tiny structures can be used for long-term five-dimensional (5D) optical data storage that is more than 10,000 times denser than Blue-Ray optical disc storage technology.
[...] In Optica, Optica Publishing Group's journal for high-impact research, [Yuhao] Lei and colleagues describe their new method for writing data that encompasses two optical dimensions plus three spatial dimensions. The new approach can write at speeds of 1,000,000 voxels per second, which is equivalent to recording about 230 kilobytes of data (more than 100 pages of text) per second.
[...] The researchers used their new method to write 5 gigabytes of text data onto a silica glass disc about the size of a conventional compact disc with nearly 100% readout accuracy. Each voxel contained four bits of information, and every two voxels corresponded to a text character. With the writing density available from the method, the disc would be able to hold 500 terabytes of data. With upgrades to the system that allow parallel writing, the researchers say it should be feasible to write this amount of data in about 60 days.
5 GB / 230 KB/s = ~6 hours
500 TB / 230 KB/s = ~69 years
500 TB / 60 days = ~96.45 MB/s
Funding for the research was provided by the European Research Council (ENIGMA, 789116) and Microsoft (Project Silica).
High speed ultrafast laser anisotropic nanostructuring by energy deposition control via near-field enhancement (open, DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.433765) (DX)
Previously: "5D" Laser-Based Polarization Vortex Storage Could Hold Hundreds of Terabytes for Billions of Years (same university, Peter G. Kazansky on both research teams)
Microsoft Stores 75.6 GB on Glass Disc Designed to Last Thousands of Years
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:36PM (5 children)
if it's round why give it's dimensions as 7.5 x 7.5 x 2mm? Wouldn't it be better to say it's a 7.5 cm diameter disk 2mm thick?
Or I dunno, there aren't any pictures. Maybe it is a glass square.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by progo on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:26PM (1 child)
Looks like a rectangle to me in the Variety story attachment where someone is holding a glass recording object in their hand. That page's title is also where "glass disc" comes from.
This is the state of journalism.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:44PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc [wikipedia.org]
Good enough for Wikipedia.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:01PM (1 child)
Disks, especially blank business card sized CD-R disks [amazon.com] can be rectangular. Square disks.
These were fun back in the day. There was a distribution, DSL, I think that was designed to fit into the capacity of this small CD-R.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:27PM
Yes, real fun. One wrecked my boss's CD drive with some very entertaining sound effects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @11:16PM
you are you calling square, disc hipster.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:39PM (9 children)
Almost big enough for a modern video game! I can't wait to see what the final capacity will be when it finally hits the consumer market.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:41PM (3 children)
Lasts forever, until you drop it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:59PM
Sure, it is breakable if you try hard enough, admitted Rowstron. “If you take a hammer to it, you can smash glass.” But absent of such brute force, the medium promises to be very, very safe, he argued: “I feel very confident in it.”
From the article.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:49PM
Just dropping it wouldn't erase the data. If it was valuable enough you would read the pieces and put the data back together again.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by Only_Mortal on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:38PM
I'm just about to start a small business selling protective covers...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:55PM (4 children)
Pity the video games won't work in thousands of years' time because the servers needed for the always-on authentication DRM will no longer exist; unless of course the corporations
are charitable enoughconsider it profitable to encode the servers on glass as well or go DRM-free.If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @09:02PM (1 child)
You just store the cracked version:
https://www.geek.com/games/diablo-iii-offline-play-crack-released-in-beta-form-1500569/ [geek.com]
https://www.techspot.com/news/80084-denuvo-protected-games-cracked-faster-than-ever.html [techspot.com]
If no crack, you consider it lost to history.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:04AM
You just store the cracked version
BOO! That was horrible!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:52AM
Would’t it be Hound Dog Gay?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:34PM
The lack of DRM servers is irrelevant. Microsoft will have changed the file format hundeds of times by then without back-compatability. That's even if the world hasn't become like H G Wells depicted in The Time Machine and nobody cares.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:53PM (7 children)
Did they forget that glass window panes over a couple hundred years old are thicker at the bottom because of gravity?
(Score: 3, Informative) by epitaxial on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:56PM
That never happened.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:09PM (4 children)
They didn't forget it, because it isn't true. There are places that have been found where the thicker part is at the top.
The way they manufactured glass back in the Middle Ages was different than we do now, so there was some amount of flowing as it was cooling, not after. And mounting the panes thicker-side-down just makes sense from a construction standpoint.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-finally-been-destroyed-496190894 [gizmodo.com]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:35PM
Wow. I'm one of the lucky 10,000 today. Thank you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:56PM
The ones that were thicker at the top are that way because the earth is flat and it was located near the edge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:13AM
Yeah, in Australia...
You know I'll love you
till the moon's upside down...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @02:37PM
How did they not headline that:
"The glass is a liquid myth has finally been shattered"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:27PM
That's not true. I was told that before too, that glass is still a "supercooled liquid" and as such will still flow (albeit slowly). Then someone on slashdot posted several articles about why that isn't true, and they were pretty interesting to read.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:54PM (5 children)
The electronics and knowledge to read it does not.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:02PM (2 children)
Just print microfiche on it. At most you need a strong magnifying glass to read it. Audio wave forms should endure the ages also
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @09:25PM (1 child)
Since TFA mentions the use of error-correcting codes this is unlikely to be a microfiche-like storage medium.
Many years ago I read about a project which did store microfiche-like images on glass, along with instructions on how to use it translated into many languages, which was visible as large text starting at the outside edge and spiralling inwards getting progressively smaller (intended as a hint that you should be looking at this thing under a microscope).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @09:31PM
Ah, this was it: http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/ [rosettaproject.org]
In this case the images were actually etched on a nickel substrate and then encased in glass.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:08PM (1 child)
Just put a stone instruction manual next to the storage box.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:19AM
On the front cover:
"In case of emergency, break glass"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:59PM (13 children)
Is this just the next step in the CD->DVD->Blueray iteration of technologies or is there something actually different other than switching from plastic to glass?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:19PM (5 children)
This is a niche area of the market. Personally, I thought it beyond corporate thought patterns to actually care enough about things like archival storage. There's a difference between, saying you have an archives, then filling it with film/tape of some sort and actually thinking about how that film/tape will stand the test of time. Plastic isn't a great long-term storage media, metal rusts, and paper leaves something to be desired. Glass seems like it could fit the bill for serious long term storage. Personally, I'd be a bit pessimistic with regards to the longevity of a glass platter, but I would be open to it as part of a comprehensive archival system.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:39PM (1 child)
There's a niche demand for storage with a 1,000+ year lifetime. That's perfect for stunts like putting a "Library of Alexandria" on the Moon, but it's also good to have something you can stick in a box unpowered for decades without experiencing any data loss. You can't do that with a penta-level cell 100 TB SSD.
Capacity is also a draw. Microsoft's 75 GB is cute, but an optical/holographic technology could store hundreds of terabytes [wikipedia.org], and potentially petabytes or exabytes. There's already zettabytes of annual Internet activity, and astronomers are producing exabytes of data. If you can put a petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte, etc. on a glass medium, someone will find that useful.
The main risk they identified was shattering. So don't drop it during removal. With the right containment system, it could survive a plane crash or earthquake.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:33AM
Financial motivation explained here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @07:51AM
It is beyond their thought patterns still.
Selling them for a profit is inside those patterns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:05PM
Also, from the aritcle.
So, yeah, this is very much scientific in nature, as opposed to practical usage.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday November 09 2019, @11:08AM
This is not intended as a distribution format or for end-user deployment. This is intended for large-scale cold / archival storage in Azure. It's a niche market, in that it has a single customer (Azure), but that customer currently has data centers in 54 regions around the world and stores a phenomenal amount of data. A lot of that is for off-site backups by other people, so most of it is never used (you only need the backups if the local system fails and you only need the off-site backups if the on-site backups fail). The vast majority of the data will never be accessed, you just don't know which small fraction will.
The glass is very durable write-once storage, for exactly that kind of use case. It doesn't matter if the readers are bulky and expensive, because you're building a small number of them for each data center, it matters that the media are cheap (and can be made in a form factor that makes sense for a warehouse deployment, not a home office) and don't need periodically reading and writing back onto other media. The glass is cheap and does not deform or wear out. You can bake it in the oven, scratch it with wire wool, and still read back the data. You can even drop it on the floor without breaking it. Just don't hit it with a hammer. For a data center, ensuring that the storage is physically secure against that kind of attack is pretty easy, and if the glass is sufficiently cheap then geographically replicated copies are also very cheap.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:20PM (3 children)
There's no pressing need to create new generations of 12 cm discs anymore. We might see new standards beyond Ultra HD Blu-ray [wikipedia.org] and BDXL [soylentnews.org], but I doubt it.
This is about creating WORM or cold storage with as much capacity as possible using technologies like holography. See the related story [soylentnews.org] which is similar to this concept. The choice of the Superman movie is not an accident since this kind of technology has been referred to as the "Superman memory crystal" [wikipedia.org]. It doesn't necessarily need to spin, so the circular shape could be abandoned.
From the Verge article:
I think we will eventually see petabytes or even exabytes stored in a format similar to the one shown here. It could compete with hard drives or tape depending on if it is re-writable.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 07 2019, @05:31PM (2 children)
With exabytes capacity, rewritability is no issue in normal use. Just write the replacement at a new position, followed by an updated directory. You'll not even come close to filling it during your lifetime.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:09PM (1 child)
It is useful at the terabytes level, which is what has been demonstrated (not by Microsoft).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:57PM
I was replying to your last paragraph, where you explicitly mentioned exabytes, but conditioned on re-writability. My point is that at that size, for usual purposes re-writability of the medium doesn't matter.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by progo on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:30PM (2 children)
Recordable Blu Ray discs aren't designed to store precious archives in libraries. When I decided what to use to archive my home video projects' source files, I decided on Blu Ray, with the understanding that recordable DVDs last maybe 5 to 20 years, and if you write two copies and verify often enough, you might be okay -- and maybe Blu Ray is like that.
You don't archive precious data owned by an organization with a lot of money, on a system like recordable Blu Ray.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:26AM (1 child)
I don't know if they use a glass substrate in one of their layers, but the m-disc discs are designed for the exact archival purposes Microsoft's claim to be for, are already on market, and are available in 4.7, 25, 50, and 100GB formats. Microsoft's in comparison is more complicated, requires machine learning and a different drive, and is likely to be patented up the ass for as long as possible, even above and beyond Bluray.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:32AM
I would be surprised if the Microsoft prototype tops out at 75 GB, but it needs to hit 100 TB to compete with other technologies.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Touché) by rufty on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:20PM (3 children)
But will this last long enough for the copyright to expire?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:48PM (2 children)
Not after the Mouse gets wind of it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 06 2019, @11:46PM (1 child)
Perhaps a sad, but true statement. I still hold out a bit of hope. Then again, I'd rather certain works be allowed exemption / lengthy extension, if as in the case of Mickey Mouse, it's an iconic representation of actively used assets.
Here's a table that helps you see how convoluted our copyright system is: https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain [cornell.edu] And that was the easy to read version.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Friday November 08 2019, @04:13AM
What you're looking for is trademarks, which can last forever so long as the trademark is being actively used. If Steamboat Willie was public domain, you couldn't just go and make new Mickey Mouse cartoons without permission, as you'd run into trademark issues. You would, however, be able to freely copy, watch, and distribute copies of Steamboat Willie.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:24PM (3 children)
75GB? Why that's only 25% less than a 100GB M-DISC [amazon.com].
But then, M-DISC uses a glassy-carbon surface which only lasts thousands of years, so, completely different.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:43PM
It's a "proof of concept". You should be comparing it to this thing [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:05PM
I want the data crystals from Babylon 5.
Talia : What was he, and what was on that data crystal he gave you?
Kosh : Reflection, surprise, terror... for the future.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday November 07 2019, @05:54AM
Wow! Only about $10 a disc, and you can get the burner [amazon.com] for $20!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:32PM (2 children)
No spoilers,
In the third book they needed a way to record information over eons and settled on: carve it in stone
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:08PM (1 child)
If you can only fit ten commandments on it, that is rather low data density.
No room for a few million additional commandments.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:13AM
Has anyone found it?
4000 years ago?
(Score: 3, Touché) by SomeGuy on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:04PM (2 children)
Only viewable in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:08PM (1 child)
Will 75.6 GB be enough to hold the next version of Windows?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:17AM
After agreement to TOS on disk 1, it will instruct you to insert program disk 2.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:09AM
They should have gone with a season of Gilligan's Island. That would have revealed the true state of entertainment for our era.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @01:47AM
One episode of a Batman cartoon has Mr. Freeze showing up in the far future. Batman encoded a computer program on the walls of the Bat Cave in titanium.