Project Silica
News & features
In the news | Microsoft Innovation Stories
Microsoft Unlocked | Sealed in glass
Sealed in glass Project Silica’s coaster-size glass plates can store data for thousands of years, creating sustainable storage for the world. Storing data on glass might sound futuristic, but it’s a concept that dates back to the 19th century when…
In the news | Data Center Dynamics
Issue 46 – The Last Data Center
Long-term data storage enters a new epoch. What will remain of the human race? We don’t know how long our species will survive, and even if we can hold on for thousands more tears it is not clear that the…
In the news | Pitchfork
The Global Music Vault Wants to Safeguard the World’s Songs—But Who Decides What’s Preserved?
Halfway between Norway and the North Pole lies Svalbard, a demilitarized archipelago sheathed in glacial ice. The remote territory is home to less than 3,000 people, some reindeer and polar bears, and the Arctic World Archive—a collection of digitized historical documents,…
In the news | Fast Company
Microsoft’s plan to preserve music for 10,000 years with glass
Nothing is forever. By Microsoft’s estimation, hard drives protect data for five years before they can go bad. Tape lasts about a decade, while CDs and DVDs can make it as long as 15 years before their contents are at…
In the news | Global Music Vault
Elire Group collaborates with Microsoft on a trial for long-term archival storage
Elire Group, with Global Music Vault, is dedicated to sourcing, safeguarding, and celebrating the world’s most valuable music, where the mission is to pass on the world’s music to the next generations forever. Microsoft is using recent discoveries in ultrafast…
In the news | The GitHub Blog
GitHub Archive Program: the journey of the world’s open source code to the Arctic
Your code is safe and sound in the Arctic At GitHub Universe 2019, we introduced the GitHub Archive Program along with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault. Our mission is to preserve open source software for future generations by storing your code in an archive built to…
AI Residency: Gaining skills in machine learning through mentorship and real-world applications
| Patricia Gillespie
In September last year, the Microsoft AI Residency program graduated its first class. The second class is already settled in and undertaking an exciting range of projects, and recruitment for the third class is underway! The AI Residency program is…
In the news | OnMSFT
A conversation with the researcher who put a movie on a piece of glass with Project Silica
One of the highlights of Satya Nadella’s vision keynote at the Microsoft Ignite 2019 last week was Project Silica where he held out a drink coaster-sized piece of regular quartz glass and shared that the piece of glass had the…
In the news | Ars Technica
Microsoft’s Project Silica offers robust thousand-year storage
Ars spoke Tuesday with Dr. Ant Rowstron, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, about an innovative cold storage project called Silica. Silica aims to replace both tape and optical archival discs as the media of choice for…