- Cerabyte’s ceramic-on-glass technology introduces a new era of sustainable digital archiving
- Permanent media eliminates the energy requirements of conventional archival data systems
- Smartphone-readable samples show how accessible permanent storage may soon become
At the recent 2025 Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit in San Jose, California, Cerabyte offered attendees an unusual opportunity to “own a piece of storage history.”
The company displayed framed samples of its ceramic-on-glass media, each containing a digital copy of the U.S. Constitution.
These early access samples demonstrate a new form of data preservation technology intended to outlast any conventional medium currently in use.
The giveaway was part of the OCP Innovation Village, where companies present technologies that are reshaping the future of computing, networking and data centers.
Cerabyte’s approach is based on the idea that data storage must be both permanent and sustainable.
The company’s ceramic media requires no maintenance, energy or migration to preserve information, offering what it calls “unlimited data retention.”
This design greatly reduces long-term storage costs and carbon footprints, a claim likely to appeal to data-heavy industries such as hyperscalers, research institutions and digital archives.
This demonstration focused on symbolic content rather than capacity, and the current prototype reportedly holds several gigabytes.
Visitors to the summit watched a live demonstration showing how to read and decode the data stored on the ceramic-on-glass media using a standard smartphone.
This accessibility feature differentiates the technology from traditional archival storage, which often requires specialized readers or environments.
“Data is at the heart of society as well as artificial intelligence, yet storage media are not designed to retain data permanently while being quickly accessible,” said Christian Pflaum, Cerabyte CEO. “This is a unique combination that is key to saving the past and unlocking future use cases.”
Despite the promise of longevity and efficiency, questions remain about scalability, manufacturing costs, and real-world implementation.
While the ceramic-on-glass samples provide a striking insight into the permanence of archives, their path to commercial viability in modern cloud storage environments and AI data infrastructures remains uncertain.
So far, attendees at the OCP Summit took home not only a memory of innovation, but perhaps a tangible sign of where the future of data preservation may lead.
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