Project Silica 2022

Looks like this is what Microsoft uses to provide their competing product to AWS Glacier Deep Archive.

Pretty interesting. When AWS launched Glacier, people assumed tape, but that doesn't seem to quite add up relative to the characteristics of the product, and AWS has never said a word on the technology it uses. Then someone came out and started claiming they were using BDXLs, as I recall. Have to say, I did not conceive of "invent your own optical storage media" as a possibility.

My guess is Microsoft made this information public because AWS is doing something similar and they're the second-mover rather than the first-mover. But that's just my guess.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKpA1OiEFE

Also interesting to note how this demonstrates there is a ton of unharnessed potential to optical recording that isn't available in a product available to the general public. In fact, it seems quite telling that every increase in optical media storage capacity available to the public has coincided with a new video format (e.g. 128GB BDXLs for UHD Blu-ray). Since physical medium-based video distribution is dying, that doesn't bode well for the continued availability of optical media archival solutions that can keep up with contemporary capacities...