DailyTech - New Memory Can Store Data Safely for 1,000 Years

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Hardware New Memory Can Store Data Safely for 1,000 Years
Jason Mick (Blog) - June 24, 2009 4:30 PM

50 comment(s) - last by MrPoletski.. on Jun 28 at 7:39 PM

The new Digital Rosetta Stone (DRS) memory, invented in Japan, can store data for over 1,000 years. Currently optical is the best long-term storage format, but it degrades within 100 years or less. (Source: techshout.com)

This is one LONG term storage solution

Memory longevity is a touchy subject that most businesses, researchers, and consumers purposefully ignore. Magnetic drives, in theory, are thought to be corrupted in about 40 years due to the Earth's magnetic field, though this has not been fully observed yet (hard drives have only seen widespread since the 80s). Optical discs, such as CDs and DVDs are expected to become corrupt in about 30-100 years, if not kept out of contact with moisture and oxygen.

So if we wanted to store something for more than a century, there are few good current solutions. Until now, that is; Japanese researchers have come up with a new form of ultra-long term memory that they say can last over 1,000 years. They dub their memory the Digital Rosetta Stone, or DRS memory for short.

The system consists of a stack of four 15-inch wafers, each containing special memory chips. The wafers are sealed with SiO₂ and SiN to insulate them from oxygen gas and water. This key feature maintains the humidity at below 2 percent, essentially allowing the long life. The wafers will be built on a 45nm CMOS technology and offer 2.5 Tbits of total memory capacity

In order to get at the memory and read from and write to it, researchers use a electron-beam direct-writing technology. A mask ROM on the chips provides inductive coupling and allows contactless communication.

The test prototype used larger scale 0.18μm CMOS technology and 5mm x 5mm test chips. With the reader and the wafers separated from contact by 0.2 mm, a four-channel communication speed of 150Mbps was achieved, using only 56mW of power.

Researchers hope the system will be used to protect mankind's most precious and critical digital data. In time the technology may see its way into the mainstream as well, serving as a backup for important business or consumer information.

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Ancient porn

By KentState on 6/24/2009 5:01:10 PM , Rating: 2

Now my great great great great..... great grandchildren will be able to view the porn of the ancients.

RE: Ancient porn

By AnnihilatorX on 6/24/2009 5:05:06 PM , Rating: 3

Eww the ancients surely have squishy dicks. My CyborgPunger-3000 implant is thousand times better and can even do barrel rolls!

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RE: Ancient porn

By SlipDizzy on 6/24/2009 5:14:57 PM , Rating: 2

I'm pretty sure sex as we know it will be extinct in 1000 years. This storage will be a great way for our ancestors to look back and say, "Ewwww what are they doing to each other." Hmmm... this kind of reminds me of a movie starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock.

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RE: Ancient porn

By IvanAndreevich on 6/24/2009 8:35:50 PM , Rating: 4

It has survived for millions of years, and it will be extinct in 1000? Hahaha.

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RE: Ancient porn

By Chocobollz on 6/25/09, Rating: 0

RE: Ancient porn

By Flail on 6/27/2009 11:00:42 AM , Rating: 2

10,001,000 ? 1,000

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RE: Ancient porn

By Flail on 6/27/2009 11:04:27 AM , Rating: 2

Oh, great DailyTech doesn't read unicode characters. That question mark is supposed to be a does not equal sign btw.

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RE: Ancient porn

By Jimbo1234 on 6/24/2009 9:26:48 PM , Rating: 2

The movie you are thinking of is Demolition Man.

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RE: Ancient porn

By Woodsy on 6/24/2009 9:45:07 PM , Rating: 3

You are a savage creature John Spartan, and I wish for you to leave my domicile now!

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RE: Ancient porn

By joeymac on 6/25/2009 1:19:58 AM , Rating: 2

Without that movie I don't think I would have ever worked out the 3 sea shell system for wiping your ass. It's truly a gift. That needs to be the first bit of data that's backed up... as it were.

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RE: Ancient porn

By Mitch101 on 6/25/2009 8:21:03 AM , Rating: 2

Yup that President Schwarzenegger was a visionary.

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RE: Ancient porn

By Holly on 6/25/2009 2:49:00 PM , Rating: 2

Damn, I'd elect him just for that movie quote.

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Format changees faster than storage

By zinfamous on 6/24/2009 11:20:10 PM , Rating: 3

so what? It's not like we or anyone else will be able to access that data 1k years from now.

It would have to be transferred onto a more modern format long before then. and then again, and again, and again.

How easy is it to read 5.5 Floppy these days? 3.5? ...how long before CDs and DVDs are.

Seriously, what's the point of long-term storage when storage formats, based on current data, tend to go extinct every 15-20 years?

RE: Format changees faster than storage

By sheh on 6/25/2009 12:37:48 AM , Rating: 2

If a format gets standardized as "long term archival", I assume hardware for reading it would keep on being produced.

And if a format is old enough, custom making a reading device could be an option. I think if someone today wanted to make a reader for 8" floppies, and even more so an electronics company, it could conceivably be done with cheap off-the-self parts.

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By mmcdonalataocdotgov on 6/25/2009 7:23:55 AM , Rating: 2

I like the existing 1000+ year storage medium: Stone. The Egyptians have these guys beat. 4000+ years data storage at least. And single bit degredation does not destroy the whole message.

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By tastyratz on 6/25/2009 8:20:32 AM , Rating: 2

I can see it now,
New career paths will emerge... "data archeologists"

"Oh my, I do believe I found a relic that was known as a jaaayyy peeeegg. Our ancestors used these to store images"
"its a wonder they got by on such means"

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By Major HooHaa on 6/25/2009 9:58:58 AM , Rating: 2

RE: data archaeologists.

That reminds me of a random Star Trek: Voyager episode, when they came back in time to our present day and were attempting to use are computers. The crew members were commenting on how these ancient humans still used pictographs (think Windows icons) in their computer systems.

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By Paperdoc on 6/26/2009 9:36:39 AM , Rating: 2

The beginnings of "Data Archeoligists" exist now. A friend (professional librarian) has shown me an extensive document on data archiving from the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (website http://www.iasa-web.org ) dealing with such issues over the time frame of the last century. You'd be amazed at the complexity of reading information from non-standardized systems and equipment that no longer exists, even over such a short time frame. From that experience the group is dealing with how we can store data so that it can last a while and be reproduced accurately in future.

Regarding ability to discern the original meaning, I'm reminded of a scene from the novel, "A Canticle for Liebowitz" by Walter M.Miller, Jr. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibow... ). My sketchy recollection is that in a post-nuclear-war society that operates rather like the European middle ages, the monks have found and preserved a relic from a great scientist, Liebowitz, which they do not understand yet. It is a scrap of paper bearing words like "bagels" and "cream cheese".

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By Major HooHaa on 6/25/2009 9:43:34 AM , Rating: 2

I think storage that lasts 1,000 years could be a good thing. But I am not so sure about prediction that hard drives will fail in about 40 years due to the earth’s magnetic field. People have tested hard drives to destruction and they are surprisingly tough things to destroy.

One computer magazine was testing how robust an average hard drive is. They subjected one hard drive to a large electromagnet that is normally for picking up and moving scrapped cars in a junkyard. The hard drive still worked afterwards and the data was intact.

As for reading the data on the disk. We might want to seal the data in a vault, along with the computer hardware and software to read it again after a millennium. A computerized time capsule.

I also heard recently about an emulator that is being put together, that will read data from any computer format, going right back to the early days of computing.

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By grandpope on 6/25/2009 1:00:12 PM , Rating: 2

We should broadcast the instructions to make these readers across the stars, ala Contact, to ensure that future generations of aliens can look at pictures of Jenna Jameson.

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RE: Format changees faster than storage

By icanhascpu on 6/25/2009 7:12:13 PM , Rating: 2

zinfamous, you've been had by what I like to call 'the pseudo intellectual'. Perhaps you read it somewhere? Perhaps a friend tried to explain it to you. Sure, it all seems very logical what you just said.

Very logical unless you're an engineer. Or a biologist. Or a chemist. Or just about any similar field that realizes that the only real thing that changes in technology is how information is accessed. Electricity isn't going to change. Metal is still going to be made of roughly the same chemistry, and an engineer 1000 years in the future, unless we destroy ourselves by then, will no doubt have ample ways to simply scan the piece of hardware and extract data from it. No need for USB. No need for 802.11n.

So before we go off BSing that we cant even get that info in 1000 years because we would have no way to access it, try to understand that just because you are too lazy/stupid to think of a way to access that old 5.25 floppy from your armchair, it doesn't mean no one is.

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Ancient Orbital 2 Girls 1 Cup

By SiliconAddict on 6/24/2009 8:58:09 PM , Rating: 4

Send a satellite into an orbit that brings it back a thousand years from now to reintroduce and horrify the world to Two Girls One cup yet again! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

RE: Ancient Orbital 2 Girls 1 Cup

By MrPoletski on 6/25/2009 6:22:09 AM , Rating: 2

I still think we sould make a g0atse in the moon.

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RE: Ancient Orbital 2 Girls 1 Cup

By therealnickdanger on 6/25/2009 7:46:40 AM , Rating: 2

I've been saying forever that we should nuke the moon for every Independence Day. What an awesome fireworks display that would be! Why not eventually carve a g0atse into it?

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RE: Ancient Orbital 2 Girls 1 Cup

By MrPoletski on 6/28/2009 7:39:59 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah and not only does that prove the moon isn't made out of cheese, we get to see if the man in the moon has been eating cheese or not.

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Prove it

By valkator on 6/24/2009 4:51:19 PM , Rating: 2

When I buy this and it only lasts me 980 years, does that mean I can sue for loss of data?

RE: Prove it

By AnnihilatorX on 6/24/2009 4:57:52 PM , Rating: 5

You probably will have to sue the cryogenic company which assured that you will be kept alive in 980 years time.

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RE: Prove it

By Ticholo on 6/25/2009 10:56:35 AM , Rating: 2

If he's alive to sue in 980 years I think the cryogenic company fulfilled their contract, no?

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Re-creating old tech???

By croc on 6/25/2009 12:26:01 AM , Rating: 2

I don't see how this is much of a break-through, seeing as how the Chinese, Egyptians, Romans, Sumarians, Mayans and Aztecs have already accomplished this amazing feat two or more millennia ago. (My apologies to any civilizations I left out.)

RE: Re-creating old tech???

By ayat101 on 6/25/2009 12:49:57 AM , Rating: 2

How?

Capacity is the answer. How many bits of information survives from those times? Not too much.

With digitial long term archiving you can save much more... plus the more gives you the chance to save different kinds of data. You can save languages - see how they change over time. All sorts of sounds. You can save photographs and movies. How many sounds from the past do you know to have survived? Do you know of any photographs too? So on and so on...

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RE: Re-creating old tech???

By darkxuy on 6/25/2009 9:02:46 AM , Rating: 2

Yep, too bad 1000 years old photographs all get sunk with Atlantis..

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RE: Re-creating old tech???

By Ticholo on 6/25/2009 11:05:26 AM , Rating: 2

Yeah, they sure had amazing technology. Too bad they didn't think of waterproofing their city. Or long term digital memory storage.

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Peanuts! Nothing!

By ayat101 on 6/25/2009 12:21:08 AM , Rating: 2

The ultimate archiival medium is the BILLION YEAR storage chip. About 2.8 TB per square inch too! http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/09...

Imagine trying to work out porn when the species at least as we know it does not exists!

RE: Peanuts! Nothing!

By Alexstarfire on 6/25/2009 2:11:55 AM , Rating: 2

And by the time they find an easy cheap way to produce carbon nanotubes we'll have something 2x better.

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RE: Peanuts! Nothing!

By ayat101 on 6/25/2009 2:32:43 AM , Rating: 2

I doubt you can beat this. With extra error correction this would last as long as the Sun... but YES it will be a few years before it happens (but my DVDs with hefty par2 files will do until then)... and the BEST thing is that the race for archival digital storage has begun :) There are a few different groups working on solutions. About bloody time too! :)

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Question

By AlexWade on 6/24/2009 7:42:08 PM , Rating: 2

How do these researches know that the data will last 1000 years? All I could find out from the link is that it somehow regulates the atmosphere. Does anyone know how these researches came up with 1000 years?

To me, it seems like we could use some sort of optical medium and put it in a vacuum. Would that protect the data as well as this?

Can anybody help me out please?

RE: Question

By sheh on 6/25/2009 12:32:00 AM , Rating: 2

I didn't read anything about it besides this article, but I'm guessing extrapolation from accelerated aging tests. Run 1,000 chips in a room at 100C with high humidity, maybe changing the conditions rapidly, or to other extremes, and see how many fail after a day or two or a week.

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Kinda funny

By Oregonian2 on 6/24/2009 9:15:27 PM , Rating: 2

Umm... does the equipment needed to read, decode, and use data out from that storage also last 1,000 years?

If a floppy disk could somehow keep data for 1,000 years but if there hadn't been a working floppy drive for 980 years nor anything that would attach and use such a drive for 970 years, what good would the data on it do?

This sort of thing has been argued to death regarding film vs digital photography. Argument for things like Kodachrome that lasts for a very very very long time (albeit anybody wanting to use it need to do so this year before stocks run out, now that it has been canceled) is that it takes no auxiliary equipment to know what the storage is nor to extract the data (a Kodachrome slide can be looked at directly w/nothing but one's eyes).

RE: Kinda funny

By djc208 on 6/25/2009 9:27:10 AM , Rating: 2

That's part of the problem we're having today. We have the tapes but the equipment is getting harder and harder to find to replay the media so it can be converted.

The big issue is format. Will software know what to do with 1000 year old JPEG files? Will anyone know what a PDF file is, let alone how to turn one back into an image.

If you plan on implementing this you'll need to make sure that you include the software to run it and hope that software would run on computer systems 10 years from now, let alone 1000.

In reality you need to move your data to new formats frequently and keep it up to date, otherwise what good is that ProWrite file from 20 years ago with the meaning of life and everything on it when Word 2007 doesn't know how to open it?

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Best long-term storage?

By Yawgm0th on 6/25/2009 12:06:01 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Currently optical is the best long-term storage format, but it degrades within 100 years or less. (Source: techshout.com)

First off, optical is not a storage "format" per se. It simply means data is literally read from a medium using an optical sensor.

Optical discs, with the most common being CDs, DVDs, and BDs, are a storage format. CDs and DVDs both have theoretical lifespans of 100 years, but most CDs will in fact last closer to 20, while most DVDs closer to 30. Some CDs have been known to degrade in under 20 years.

For all intents and purposes, good CDs and DVDs will last well over 50 years if not over a hundred, which is fine for a good portion of archival usage, but not all. Museums, libraries, and others will need digital storage that lasts hundreds of years.

In any case, that caption is simply wrong. Paper and ink is the best long-term storage solution by far. The right ink and surface will last for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

RE: Best long-term storage?

By GodisanAtheist on 6/25/2009 4:32:35 AM , Rating: 2

I was wondering, does the plastic on the CD/DVD degrade, or does the actual film the data is written on. If its the latter... couldn't you simply sandwich the written surface between two plastic disks creating an air tight seal?

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Humans won't be around in a thousand years...

By callmeroy on 6/25/2009 8:42:58 AM , Rating: 2

The rate we are going in the world today -- I'm not so convinced their will be a human species in a thousand years time, or at least a significant one at least.

But perhaps its also just a normal cycle that during each person's particular time on this planet they feel is near the end of the species ....

Anyway, I tend to agree with the person who wrote will it really matter when data standards change every decade or so. I do get the logic of "well I'm sure they can just build a device to decrypt it".....I'm sure they could too -- but I don't think it would be easy.

Remember you have to think very very long term, its not like trying to find a part today for a '57 Chevy....we are talking 1000 years out. You really think even something as simple today as a USB cable will be numerous and plentiful in 1000 years? You are lucky if even one remains on the planet. Let alone today's logic boards or optics in DVD or Blu-ray players.

On the other side of the coin, if they could --- schools and libraries would be much more fascinating than today.... think about it --- don't you think if we had actual clear video footage of say the American Revolution or even the Civil War that kids would be far more interested in learning aobut it?

I know I would...but I like those subjects anyway.

I mean think of all the moments you ever thought about the history of any event and were like "I wonder what that looked like? I wonder what that must have been like? I wonder what that person really looked like?".....well if you could store 1080p quality video from today for viewing in 1000 years....those folks won't have to wonder....they can see what today looks like and the popular figures of today.

I think that would be pretty cool...

RE: Humans won't be around in a thousand years...

By zsunjian on 6/25/2009 12:55:59 PM , Rating: 2

It'd be really cool! Though who know whether in 1000 years the "2D visual display devices" we know today would still be around to play the 1080p movies. They'll probably have some form of direct neuro-interface for experiencing all senses simultaneously.

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Seems kind of pointless

By Akrovah on 6/24/2009 5:30:35 PM , Rating: 3

What is the point of something that can hold data for a thousand years? Eventually something else will come along and replace it, and probably in the next 30 years or so, and then that tech will be replaced, and then that one and so on and so forth.

The only way this thing seems likely to actually store data for a thousand years is if technological society falls then rebuilds after several hundred years. But then they most likely won't even know how to access this particular type of device anyway. Even if they can acess it, what are the odds that they will be able to translate it. And i'm not talking about simple language transaltion, but the more abstract translation of bits and bytes themselves. They won't necessarily have the same 8 bits per byte or file types we have today. They wont't be able to tell what is file header and what is actual info or even where on file begisn and another ends. So unless that info is stored in some more rudimentary place, like etched in stone, there is no way they will be able to read this.

Cool about the teensy power usage though.

RE: Seems kind of pointless

By poundsmack on 6/24/2009 5:38:50 PM , Rating: 1

"What is the point of something that can hold data for a thousand years?"

The application for this is simple; "Porn through the ages!"
These devices ensure that porn, the internets most valuable commodity, will live forever.

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RE: Seems kind of pointless

By eddieroolz on 6/24/09, Rating: -1

Just think, Obama could have ...

By A Stoner on 6/24/2009 6:11:51 PM , Rating: 3

Put all his greatest speeches and what not on it, and given this, instead of a pathetic Ipod, to the Queen of England, so future generations of Britains could look back and worship him.

Digital Rosetta Stone, intriguing naming

By AnnihilatorX on 6/24/2009 4:56:14 PM , Rating: 2

Digital Rosetta Stone, intriguing name I have to say. I personally wouldn't say a market oriented product name is suitable name for a piece of technology though.