5D Memory Crystal glass storage - production planned within two years

British startup SPhotonix has announced the practical readiness of its 5D Memory Crystal technology for cold data storage. The storage medium is a 5-inch fused-quartz glass disc capable of holding up to 360 TB of data and, according to the developers, preserving it for up to 13.8 billion years - roughly the age of the Universe.

Data is written using a femtosecond laser in the form of nanostructures and encoded across five dimensions: three spatial coordinates, plus the orientation and intensity of the structures. Reading is performed optically using polarized light. Current prototypes achieve write speeds of around 4 MB/s and read speeds of up to 30 MB/s, with the company’s roadmap targeting stable read/write speeds of 500 MB/s within the next three to four years.

SPhotonix plans pilot deployments of its glass-based archival storage systems in data centers within the next two years. The company estimates the cost at about $30,000 for a writing unit and $6,000 for a reader, with a field-ready reader expected in around 18 months. SPhotonix has raised $4.5 million in funding and is now moving from laboratory prototypes toward validation in real-world operating environments.

The technology is aimed at long-term archives with infrequent access and acceptable access delays of 10 seconds or more. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft’s Project Silica or ceramic-based solutions from Cerabyte, SPhotonix focuses on licensing its storage medium and optical platform for integration into existing data center architectures, rather than offering a fully managed end-to-end storage service.