Wozniak Accepts Post At a Storage Systems Start-Up

Hugh Pickens writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is going back to work as chief scientist at Fusion-io, a start-up company that tweaks computers to let them tap vast amounts of storage at very quick rates. In the early days of Apple, Wozniak stood out as one of Silicon Valley's most creative engineers, demonstrating a knack for elegant computer designs that made efficient use of components and combined many features into a cohesive package and Wozniak will do similar work at Fusion-io, although this time with larger server computers and storage systems rather than PCs. 'I have a pretty quiet life, and I like to watch technology evolve,' says Wozniak. 'In this case, I like the people and the product, and said I would like some greater involvement.'"

Comments

SSD == Turning Point

[dsginter]

I've had the chance to play with some pretty phenomenal solid state drives (SSD) lately and, I have to say, that I can't believe that there isn't more industry buzz.

In a few months, an extra $100 will probably buy 120GB SSD, which will make a given PC perform like something completely different (you really need to go test drive an SSD PC if you have not yet indulged).

In a decade, I can see handhelds having so much storage and so much processing power, that we'll all just carry around our PC-on-a-phone and just use a standard interface to put that PC on any external monitor and keyboard. Hell, I can USB boot Ubuntu from my Blackberry, already.

Re:SSD == Turning Point

[ouachiski]

In a decade, I can see handhelds having so much storage and so much processing power, that we'll all just carry around our PC-on-a-phone and just use a standard interface to put that PC on any external monitor and keyboard.

Ok I have heard this a million times now and I just dont see it happening. Cell phones are easily lost, broken, dropped in toilets or stolen. Could you imagine what you would feel if you dropped your pc in the toilet. I can see integrating more tasks into it, but you will still have a need for a base station.

My Hero!

[the_B0fh]

Woz was always my hero. I was just a pimply faced kid when I first discovered Apple IIs (or more correctly, Apple II compatibles, since I was from a 3rd world country). Then I started reading about what he did, and his designs and so on. And when AAPL went public, he gave away his own shares to people who helped Apple get off the ground. Very very nice, very down to earth guy, from what I read about him. IIRC, he wanted to sell the Apple Is for $200 or so, and Jobs wanted $2000, and they settled on $666.66.

I was so disappointed when he left Apple and quit working on the Apple II series - that was such a great computer, and ahead of its times.

Re:Good - Stay Busy

[Anthony_Cargile]

Well, he does until the company gets too big then he'll leave out of dissatisfaction. He has stated this, and you almost can't blame him: little usually= friendly, personal, tight; big usually= formal, !personal, and sometimes even evil.

Regardless, he is a very skilled hardware hacker. I especially appreciate still to this day the ADB, which was designed (according to legend) in a mere weekend, on the same level of hack-skill as the "Joy wrote vi in a weekend" hacker lore. I just hope he never loses his ability for great pranks, too - that's another personal hero element he has for me.

Keep it up woz, never change.

ZFS and SSDs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the chance to play with some pretty phenomenal solid state drives (SSD) lately and, I have to say, that I can't believe that there isn't more industry buzz.

Depends on who you ask. The Sun ZFS guys are all over this and are screaming at the top of their lungs about the use of SSDs for both read and write performance:

http://blogs.sun.com/brendan/entry/l2arc_screenshots
http://blogs.sun.com/ahl/entry/hybrid_storage_pools_in_cacm
http://blogs.sun.com/main/tags/fishworks

Sun many have other problems, but engineering talent is not one of them.

It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with.

[jd]

Storage systems are not trivial pieces of hardware and the range of approaches for handling the problem is staggering.

In the red corner, you've your basic NAS and SAN solutions. In the blue corner, you've direct-disk-to-memory systems using RDMA and Infiniband. In the green corner, you've WAN solutions (SCSI-over-IP, RAID-over-IP).

In the purple corner, you've smarter drives (virtual sectors, filesystems in hardware). In the cyan corner, you've more powerful hardware (many read heads per platter, uber-large RAM caches).

(Knowing Wozniak's reputation for doing things different, he's probably inventing a rhododendron corner.)

There is no shortage of opportunity. However, as with the early home computer market, there is a shortage of consensus on what a storage system actually does, other than "store stuff". That seems to be a world Wozniak does well in - the lack of standards meant the Apple II did well, the presence of standards meant that NeXT didn't. In the current computing world, where standards are everything (especially if they come with pretty holographic stickers), can he do much with the flexibility in the arena?