Finally, There Is An “Eternal Storage” That Lasts For Over 1,000 Years

Do you want to be remembered for a long time? This new data storage tech can preserve information about you for as long as 1,000 years. It stores binary data in the form of metal nanodots placed on a silicon wafer, which is then sealed. The data can be read wirelessly. The researchers who created the storage tested it under artificial conditions, and it did last for a millennium.

team of Japanese researchers at the Kobe University has created, what we can call, an ‘eternal storage’ that’s capable of holding data safely for 1,000 years.

A Nikkei Technology post says the storage tech was announced at the ISSCC 2017 by the group led by Makoto Nagata and Noriyuki Miura. It involves metal nanodots placed at specific locations on a silicon wafer, arranged in a grid fashion and depicting binary 0 and 1 depending on their position.

After placing the metal nanodots on the silicon wafer, it can be sealed using an insulating material. The data present on the silicon wafer can be read without any physical interaction by wirelessly transmitting power to the wafer to access the information.

It is possible to stack multiple layers of silicon wafers, thus, increasing the amount of data per square unit of area. The team created a test chip with four recording layers using an 180nm CMOS fabrication process. It enables a density of 10 gigabits per square inch.

However, with modern fabrication processes, more memory can be stuffed. A density of 1 Tb per square inch is possible in the case of the 14nm process. That’s equivalent to the hard drives we use in our daily lives.

The researchers predict that their data storage tech can last for 1,000 years. Well, nobody would be able to live that long. But the researchers showed the real potential of their storage by creating an artificial test environment.

Using necessary pressure and stress, they were able to reduce one year of the human calendar down to an hour. So, thousand years were equivalent to 1000 hours. They were to read the data off the chip after 1000 years.

With all the excitement and fascination for the eternal storage, one thing that isn’t pleasing at the moment is the data reading speed. It is currently limited to 40Kbps. But, we can expect an increase with time, as it would be the case of the chip’s storage density.

SOURCES: FOSSBYTES