[Alifatisk]

I swear I’ve read similar headline multiple times for the past decade. This can’t be new.

I thought I was experiencing some Mandela affect, had to Bing it. This is from 2022 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/project-silic...

[wumms]

They mention it in the article:

> Microsoft began to build on their work in 2017. Although Kazansky’s approach maximizes durability and the density of data, in the latest work, Microsoft has gone for practicality. They explore a method that enables data to be written faster and decoded more reliably than did Project Silica’s previous iterations, says Black, and it uses cheaper borosilicate glass, rather than harder-to-make fused silica.

Following your link, I found a prototype of the media storage system (2023) with just 2828 views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnK-uB4OsgU

[adrian_b]

They report now significant progresses in writing speed, data density, and also in cost, in comparison with their prototypes from a few years ago.

Unlike before, at the current performance this kind of optical storage could have actually been used in practice, had the writing lasers not been so expensive.

For a given amount of data, such glass slabs, which have the size of CD cases, would occupy a volume of about half of that required for the highest-capacity HDDs and about the same as tape cartriges.

The writing speed is similar with the file downloading speed over the Internet from most sources that throttle their connections, instead of allowing full speed.