TV-SAT, CCTV, WLAN Dipol Weekly Review

Project Silica can store data for thousands of years.

Researchers associated with Microsoft Research in Cambridge have developed a new way of long-term archiving data that they claim can make it readable for up to more than 10,000 years. Traditional media such as hard drives or magnetic tapes have a limited lifespan and require cyclical migration of data to new media, which is costly and risky. The new technology, known as Project Silica, involves recording information inside pieces of glass using ultra-short laser pulses. The data is encoded as tiny structural changes called voxels in the material. In a single piece of glass with an area of 12 cm² and a thickness of 2 mm, as much as 4.84 terabytes of information can be stored. This is roughly the amount of data contained in around 2 million printed books.

The technology has been optimised for speed and efficiency. The research team uses four laser beams simultaneously, which allows data to be recorded at high speed. Importantly, the researchers extended the use of the method from the more expensive silica glass to borosilicate glass, which is cheaper and more readily available.

The reading process involves scanning the glass under a microscope and the images are then interpreted by machine learning algorithms. The whole thing: both writing and reading is fully automated, making it easy to handle large data sets. Although the solution offers great durability and stability, its developers emphasise that it is not a technology designed for ordinary users. Rather, it is intended to serve large data centres and cloud services that need reliable archives.

Despite the promising results, the solution is still in the development phase. One of the main challenges remains scalability, i.e. the ability to massively and cost-effectively deploy the technology in global data centres. The question of future compatibility is also important. For data recorded today to be readable thousands of years from now, it will be necessary to retain knowledge of how it is encoded and read. On the other hand, in the context of the increasing digitalisation of the world from medical records to cultural and scientific archives, the need for long-term, stable information storage is becoming more urgent. If glass storage technology proves to be scalable and economically viable, it could become the foundation for a new era of digital archiving.

Optical-copper RTV/SAT installation using the SIGNAL PROfessional line of devices.

This solution can be used in large facilities where the distance between staircases is more than a few dozen metres. The fibre optic cable provides excellent insulation against surges. This means that any surges induced in the vicinity of the antennas will stop at the optical transmitter installed immediately behind them - all other components of the installation are 100% protected. Signal PROfessional uses 1 optical fibre to transmit the entire package of TV signals.