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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: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 02 2021, @11:23PM (2 children)
That's cool and all, but I don't really want to wait for two months while transferring all my Blue-Ray to this new-fangled tech. Can we cut that down to two weeks with the next-gen?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 02 2021, @11:46PM
2 months is perfectly acceptable if done right. Better yet, make it so that you can write to portions of the disc without needing to fill the whole disc at once.
It doesn't sound like we could expect rewritability, but if it was cheap and large enough, you wouldn't care. Just keep writing files to it until you run out of space, even if there are duplicates.
The speed I came up with is actually a little faster than Blu-ray. The fastest Blu-ray writers [latimes.com] appear to be 72 MB/s (16x 4.5 MB/s [wikipedia.org]), usually for single-layer (25 GB) only.
Assuming the read rate is the same as the write rate, it should be more than enough for playing sequentially stored compressed 8K video endlessly.
Will this ever escape the lab (where it has been since at least 2013) AND become something consumers can easily buy at a reasonable price? Maybe not.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 03 2021, @06:24PM
You've got that much p0rn? Or do you just need that much memory to keep track of all your sock-puppet accounts.