INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In a technological advancement normally reserved for science fiction, Microsoft has teamed up with Warner Bros
to successfully store and retrieve an entire copy of the 1976 classic Superman: The Movie on a coaster-sized piece of glass using the
artificial intelligence to store data in quartz glass," as explained at Microsoft's Ignite 2019 keynote.According to the company's
Innovation Stories blog, "A laser encodes data in glass by creating layers of three-dimensional nanoscale gratings and deformations at
equivalent of pixels.Polarized light is then passed through the glass, which is decoded and read back using machine learning
algorithms.Super storageProving almost as indestructible as Superman himself, Microsoft's hard silica glass survived being boiled,
scratched, scoured, demagnetized, microwaved, baked in an oven and more with not a single instance of data loss recorded.In an effort to
safeguard its huge library of historic films (both celluloid and digital), radio shows, TV shows, animated shorts, dailies and more, Warner
approached Microsoft upon learning of its glass-based storage technology."For years, they had searched for a storage technology that could
refreshing," said Jennifer Langston of Microsoft.PreservationWarner's Brad Collar and Vicky Colf show the difference in size between huge
film canisters and Project Silica's glass-based storage.(Image credit: Jonathan Banks / Microsoft)This is particularly important when it
comes to the preservation of digitally-shot movies, which are typically archived by repeatedly copying and moving files across magnetic
medium called film, you destroy the original pixel values
Silica's glass-based storage is still in the proof of concept phase as of right now, however Microsoft Azure's chief technology officer Mark
Russinovich is confident about the technology's future
