In today’s world, most data storage devices focus on speed and rewrite capability. Yet for many applications, including: financial transactions; government, legal, and medical records; document revision systems; and e-mail or transmittals, the true priority is security and data integrity.

Imagine a storage system where data, once written, becomes physically immutable, indefinitely secure, and resilient to temperature and electromagnetic fluctuation or interference. Secure for decades, centuries, and longer.

3D-Printed Read-Only Memory (ROM) brings this vision to life. Your data is rapidly written as a 3D array of wired-up diodes, known as diode matrix memory, by a 3D Printer, using thousands of precision nozzles. Each bit of data becomes part of a real, physical, permanent electronic circuit that can be read an unlimited number of times without degradation.

This fusion of modern additive manufacturing and classic diode-matrix memory produces a secure, non-erasable medium ideal for critical data preservation.

Block-chaining is no longer needed to verify data integrity, and error code sizes can be dramatically reduced, as the data is stored as physical matter inside a large, heavy block of metals and resin with an effectively eternal lifespan, capable of surviving temperatures in excess of 200 °C and remaining unaffected by much greater electromagnetic interference than all current digital data storage methods.

The result is an eternally stable digital archive.

Existing Rewritable Storage Devices

Requirements for a system to store records typically focus on integrity, the operational life period of the recording medium, and the security of the data recorded. To achieve this, many institutions rely on a hybrid approach combining on-premises and cloud facilities, recording multiple duplicates of records across different storage medium types.

Typically, these storage media require block-chaining, error-coding, and error-handling software to prevent malicious alteration of data and to manage data corruption. Existing storage technologies tend to be delicate with respect to temperature fluctuation and electromagnetic interference, and also have relatively short operational lifespans. Some require periodic refreshing. See Table 1 below for typical storage medium capabilities, properties, and environmental requirements.

Table 1 – Properties of Various Digital Storage Devices

Maintaining many duplicate records distributed across multiple sites and communication systems — often through the public Internet — can itself become a significant security concern.

Advantages of Keeping Records on 3D-Printed ROM

As can be seen in Table 1 above, 3D-Printed ROM is superior for WORM data storage or long-term record keeping in all categories except possibly write speed. Access time and read speed may be slightly slower than solid-state drives. In all other aspects, it is superior.

• Greater, and effectively perpetual operational life relative to all existing storage media.
• It does not require refreshing of stored data. Information can remain unpowered for decades, likely millennia, unaffected.
• Temperature limits are determined by the control electronics. Once data is written, integrity is orders of magnitude greater — the data could survive most fires, though the control electronics may need replacement to read it again.
• It is more resistant to electromagnetic interference or pulse. Again, the control electronics are the limiting factor, but can be replaced after the incident with data still intact.
• As a Write-Once-Read-Many-Times device, block-chaining is not required, though it can optionally be included to increase confidence in the product.
• Minimal error-coding is required.

This device is large (approximately 300 × 300 × 500 mm) and heavy (30 kg + / 70 lbs +). While that might seem like an issue for some use cases, in record keeping and archiving, a large, heavy object makes maliciously swapping the drive far more difficult.

Due to the 3D nature of the device, its comparatively low print resolution is not a disadvantage. An early-stage product capable of achieving just 10 bits per millimetre in each dimension yields about 1 gigabyte of storage in a 200 × 200 × 200 mm memory block. Later products will offer greater capacities, as shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2 – Typical Capacities for Increasing Write Resolutions

Assuming data capacity of a later-stage product, the data density of the drive relative to space and weight is shown in Table 3 below.

Table 3 – Data Density of Different Digital Storage Media