Fusion-io Hires Steve Wozniak as Chief Scientist

Apple's employee number one is back in the game.

Steve Wozniak, the technical genius behind and co-founder of Apple, Inc. has taken a job with a new startup company. According the New York Times, "the Woz" is the new chief scientist for Fusion-io. Wozniak was already on the advisory board for Fusion-io, but has decided to make a more hands-on position. “I have a pretty quiet life, and I like to watch technology evolve,” Wozniak said to the New York Times. “In this case, I like the people and the product, and said I would like some greater involvement.”

Based out of Salt Lake City, Fusion-io has been around for about three years, and is looking to change how people think about computer data storage. The company's flagship product, the ioDrive, is a PCI Express-based storage solution that offers data at much higher speeds than traditional magnetic hard drives that connect through SATA or IDE. Fusion-io also offers the ioSAN, which is a networked enterprise-grade solid state drive, as well as the ioXtreme, a "consumer product based on the company’s ioMemory technology".

“With the revolutionary technological advances being made by Fusion-io, the company is in the right place at the right time with the right technology and ready to direct the history of technology into the 21st century and beyond,” said Wozniak in Fusion-io's press release. “The technology marketplace has not seen such capacity for innovation and radical transformation since the mainframe computer was replaced by the home computer. Fusion-io’s technology is extremely useful to many different applications and almost all of the world’s servers.”

Fusion-io has seen some play amongst bigger tech companies. Supposedly, it offers $10,000 server storage solutions comparable to offerings from EMC and NetApp that cost ten times as much. Fusion-io has also seen investment cash from Dell, and calls them as well as Hewlett-Packard and IBM customers.

“Steve Wozniak has been among the most elite innovators of his age and we are honored by his enthusiasm for our technology and our company,” said Don Basile, CEO of Fusion-io. “Steve’s inventions and insights have inspired generations of IT professionals and we look forward to the influence he will have on the future direction of Fusion-io as we continue to transform the enterprise."

If the Woz has the same impact in his new environment that he did at Apple, Fusion-io may be on the fast track to success.

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9 Comments Comment from the forums

Tindytim

You tell us about a PCI-Express data solution that isn't limited by SATA, and you won't give us some numbers?

Come on Tom's! Numbers please!
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Tindytim

Holy Sh!t.

They offer a 160GB SLC, with 600MB/s write and 700MB/s read.
http://www.fusionio.com/PDFs/Fusion%20Specsheet.pdf
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magicandy

Tom's did a feature on the Fusion IO drive back in 2007 iirc. Doubtful we'll see a drive like that in the consumer market for years.

I always felt that SATA was almost a step backwards when PCIe has always been so much quicker. I'm kind of surprised the SSD market isn't already completely PCIe-based, considering how much more raw bandwidth it offers compared to SATA and that the big thing about SSDs is speed. I have a feeling once SSDs start going mainstream and start replacing HDDs, we'll start to see the SATA bottleneck hit more and more often, and that's when the big hardware companies will start to look into PCIe for storage.
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curnel_D

Yup, after the first article a couple years ago, I've been waiting for a consumer product from them. This will be awesome if it ever hits the lower price points.
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TwoDigital

I'd never go against the watchful wisdom of Woz... I've loved his design since I bought my first Apple ]

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gto127

Is fusion io a publicly traded company? What is symbol?
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ckthecerealkiller

The reason PCI-E isn't being used for storage is it is just too expensive. I mean yah it would be very cool to see something like that but I would never buy it. I don't have that kind of cash to shell out. Average enthusiast PC costs about $2000. Something like that would cost upwards of $5000. The market would be too small and it would only cost a company money in the end.
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This company's product is terrible, and I can't believe the Woz is joining this failing company. I have had 4 io drives and had to RMA them all. I am now on the fifth and it doesn't even perform like they advertised. I have a feeling the Woz is a figurehead and this company is going to get bought out by a better company (please) or simply fold under. I would not purchase this product again if I had the choice.
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Tindytim

magicandyTom's did a feature on the Fusion IO drive back in 2007 iirc. Doubtful we'll see a drive like that in the consumer market for years.ckthecerealkillerThe reason PCI-E isn't being used for storage is it is just too expensive. I mean yah it would be very cool to see something like that but I would never buy it. I don't have that kind of cash to shell out. Average enthusiast PC costs about $2000. Something like that would cost upwards of $5000. The market would be too small and it would only cost a company money in the end.
the device allegedly achieve read and write speeds of 600 MB/sec. and 500 MB/sec. respectively. Or, at least, that's what OCZ's been boasting about its new $1,500 device.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ocz-ssd-soild-state-terabyte-madshrimps,7200.html
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