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Wozniak Accepts Post At a Storage Systems Start-Up

Posted by samzenpus on from the something-to-fall-back-on dept.

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.'"

9 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good - Stay Busy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope he can do more than 1 Gig. Let's aim for petabytes, shall we?

  2. SSD == Turning Point by dsginter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:SSD == Turning Point by Anthony_Cargile · · Score: 5, Insightful

      phenomenal solid state drives

      Combine the fast access of flash with the organization and optimizations I've seen in ext4, and you'll have an incredible system at the non-volatile storage level, which to me has always fallen behind other advancements like GPUs, processor speed/bus width, and RAM pricing/addressability (goes in hand with 64-bit processors).

      With this in mind, I eagerly look forward to my next system because of the long-awaited storage advancements over the last few years, mainly due to filesystem development (well, Linux filesystem development) and SSDs. The only gripe I have right now is the cost, which is falling steadily anyway (despite the economy) so that won't matter when its time to shop around :).

    2. Re:SSD == Turning Point by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

      The expected lifetime on the Intel X25-e is about 24 years in an enterprise server. The products of the company in TFA likewise. Use of SLC, sparing, internal error detection and correction, wear levelling and virtual block addressing add up to devices that are not only ridiculously fast - they also last a long time and degrade gracefully (pdf).

      Both the Intel SSDs and the IODrive are internally massively parallel.

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      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  3. Re:My Hero! by dmomo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    HA!

    If the mere act of this man taking a job with a start up is enough to make front page Slashdot news... and you call that being a loser. I want to be upgraded to a loser! Where do I sign up?

  4. Re:My Hero! by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jobs = marketing guy
    Wozniak = engineering geek

    If you prefer Jobs over Woz, you're at the wrong website.

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    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  5. ZFS and SSDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. be new here by be+new+here · · Score: 5, Funny

    You must be new here.

    No, I be new here!

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    I got some bad grammar
  7. Forget SSD... by solios · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...yeah, it's the buzzword. It's the current growth area.

    Let's consider what The Woz did for floppies Back In The Day. While the early floppy drives are to modern drives the way the Wright Brothers plane is comparable to the B2 Stealth Bomber.... the fact is, The Woz turned the industry on its head. While in one light his contributions can be viewed as an incremental improvement, in every other light, HOLY CRAP HE KICKED SO MUCH ASS when it came to primordial microcomputer disk controllers. He proved that the highest-tech, super-chip-count hyper-expensive controllers could be implemented with a handful of chips.

    And he could - COULD! - do it again.

    I'm totally behind some company - ANY company - throwing money at The Woz, betting on the off chance he gets another flash of insight and pushes storage technology 20 years further ahead in as many minutes.

    Was Woz the Right Genius at the Right Time, or is he a straight-up Hacker's Hacker, who just needs the right operational conditions for his genius to manifest?

    Time will tell.