A team of scientists at the University of Southampton accomplished this great task – creating such a data storage format. They have brought the 5D data storage technology to the point right before the commercialization stage. Once this happens, it will provide us with the space we so much do need to save and keep the ever growing amounts of data we currently produce.
A small nanostructured glass disc can really revolutionize the way we preserve information. The qualities are fascinating. A capacity of 360 TB is nice for a start, but when it is backed up by a thermal stability of up to 1000° C and an unlimited lifetime at room temperature, the 2.54cm in diameter quartz disc seems to be the ultimate solution for preserving large amounts of data. The “unlimited” life expectancy is limited only by our own perception of when the Universe has been created – nearly 13.8 billion of years ago. In order to write the five dimensional data on the disc and to retrieve it, the scientists’ team from the Optoelectronics Research Centre used a femtosecond lasers. The disc is regarded as an extremely stable and safe type of portable memory. From now on it is absolutely possible to eternally conserve the most important papers in the human history. The scientists’ team has already encoded notable documents like the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Magna Carta, which is one of the first documents, that challenges a king’s power and Sir Isaac Newton’s “Opticks”. The first users could potentially be all kinds of organizations with big archives, the museums, some libraries and each state’s national archives.
The technology itself is characterized by using an ultrafast laser that emits ultrashort, intense pulses of light at the disc. In general, the “ultrashort” term is used for pulses that last a few of tens of femtoseconds (fs). In order to understand how fast those pulses are, it is enough to describe the femtosecond as one millionth of the billionth of a second. Once the light is emitted, the data is virtually imprinted onto the quartz’s structure and this happens at nanoscopic scale. If this method is compared to a standard CD/DVD recording method, we discover that the data is actually within the interior of the 5D disc, while commonly used lasers record the data onto the CD’s surface. In both processes the light is reflected. Nevertheless, with the current optical discs, the reflected light encodes information only in two dimensions, while the new technology offers encoding in five dimensions – the three-dimensional position inside the disc plus the orientation of each nanostructure and its size. It also explains why the discs are named this way. Another element that contributes to such life expectancy is the material of the disc itself. Despite being known as very fragile, when properly preserved, the glass is a tough matter that can withstand high temperatures and show chemical stability.
The technology was demonstrated for a first time in 2013. During this first demonstration, a file of only 300kB was encoded onto a 5D glass disc. It was really promising for an experimental technology. Three years later the storage size has drastically risen. As mentioned, partners are needed in order to think about commercialization. Looking at the 5D data storage technology’s properties, it is hard to believe that the University of Southampton will lack support and funding in order to pursue commercialization. As the lasers’ price is a major difficulty the financial backup is essentially required. They are very expensive and it is still difficult to produce and use the discs. Despite those facts, there are very few steps before mass utilization, which could happen within the next decade. On the other hand, it’s not the only research in the field as rival techniques also exist. Hitachi is developing its own solution of glass-based data storage. Nevertheless, with technological challenges like the 5G, the IoT and BigData, the shift towards cloud and virtualization, which will require new solutions, the 5D data storage technology could prove itself extremely useful.
