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29 Comments
- MtheoryX, on 02/05/2009, -2/+18Great article...until the end when they *just had to* bring up the whole Jobs-health issue.
- Ratteler, on 02/05/2009, -0/+11Wooo Hooo!!! The Woz is back!!!
- cowboy86, on 02/06/2009, -1/+8You're ***** retarded.
- alexmensen, on 02/06/2009, -1/+7Guess he's bored of Segway polo....
- FyberOptic, on 02/06/2009, -1/+6I wish Woz lots of success. He deserves it, considering hardly anyone credits him for Apple anymore, despite him making Steve Jobs who he is today.
- Ontarian, on 02/06/2009, -3/+7Wow, looks like Steve is not the only founder of Apple with weight issues.
- apollyon, on 02/07/2009, -0/+3Woz's been on a diet in recent months. Just wait another month or so... then you'll be proven wrong. That picture is about 2 years old.
- techdever, on 02/06/2009, -1/+4It's simple weight transfer...
- sexybobo, on 02/07/2009, -0/+3Getting a 150meg fiber connection ran to your house would be faster then dsl but no one does it because it would cost $10k a month
- inactive, on 02/06/2009, -0/+3More evidence that flash will one day leave magnetic media in the dust.
- raydeen, on 02/07/2009, -0/+2Get back in there and innovate us up some cool toys! Woz is the man.
- wheresjim, on 02/06/2009, -0/+2Did anybody check to see if he's on the Madoff client list? This could be an indicator.
- systemghost, on 02/07/2009, -0/+2They make SLC-based HBA's that run on PCI-Express x4 bus in 80GB, 160GB and have one 360GB MLC HBA. They don't mention sequential read or write, but the stats printed for random r/w are impressive: 600 MB/s write 700 MB/s read. Off of PCI-E 2.0 it's approaching the bandwidth limits at x4 which is roughly 1064 MB/s.
Fun stuff, a lot of storage companies are interested in this kind of thing. Disk is being replaced at a pretty good pace in new enterprise gear offerings. - bwhite, on 02/06/2009, -0/+2Storage systems make me think of rent-able storage units ... like to store your furniture. That would be much cooler.
- DeathRay2K, on 02/06/2009, -1/+3The company he's going to work for:
http://www.fusionio.com/ - inactive, on 02/06/2009, -0/+2Well, it still has a ways to go to become cost competitive, and there's also an issue with bad sectors popping up a lot quicker with flash as opposed to traditional hard drives.
- trotc, on 02/06/2009, -1/+3SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, could ignore the call of the motherboard no longer. He is going back to work — this time 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, Mr. Wozniak stood out as one of Silicon Valley’s most creative engineers. He demonstrated a knack for elegant computer designs that made efficient use of components and combined many features into a cohesive package. At Fusion-io, Mr. Wozniak will be called upon for similar work, although this time with larger server computers and storage systems rather than PCs.
The three-year-old company, based in Salt Lake City, is expected to announce Thursday that Mr. Wozniak, already a member of Fusion-io’s advisory board, will become its chief scientist.
“I have a pretty quiet life, and I like to watch technology evolve,” Mr. Wozniak said in an interview. “In this case, I like the people and the product, and said I would like some greater involvement.”
Fusion-io has come up with a play that analysts consider rather unusual in the hardware industry.
The company relies on high-speed flash memory, commonly used to store data on an iPod or digital camera. Fusion-io takes many flash chips and packs them together on a module that is a bit bigger than a deck of cards. The module slides into certain slots inside servers. That gives the main computing chip quick access to data stored on the flash chips. In traditional systems, servers must hunt for data on separate storage systems linked to the processor by a slower connection.
Fusion-io says it has more than 300 customers, including Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah. Douglas Babb, the chief IT systems architect at the base, said a $10,000 module from Fusion-io can handle much of the work usually done by storage systems costing more than $100,000 sold by EMC, NetApp and others.
The amount of time it takes for tasks like modeling jet wings or analyzing manufacturing and supply data, Mr. Babb said, can be reduced to just hours or even minutes from days with the Fusion-io technology. “In my opinion, it’s absolutely a game-changing product,” he said.
All of the major storage makers will release products packed full of high-speed flash memory as well, although they continue to house the flash memory on disks sitting in separate systems. At the moment, Fusion-io appears to be the only company that has managed to place that memory right next to the main computational chip in servers.
Companies with large databases, including manufacturers, financial services firms and search engines like Google could benefit from the technology, said Joseph Unsworth, a technology analyst at the research firm Gartner.
Dell has invested in Fusion-io, and the start-up has sales arrangements in place with Dell, Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M.
The idea of eliminating a middleman — in this case, a storage maker — appealed to Mr. Wozniak’s penchant for efficient hardware designs, he said.
Mr. Wozniak expressed support for Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chief executive, who took a leave of absence from Apple in January to deal with unspecified health issues. Asked about public concerns over Mr. Jobs’s health and lack of public disclosures, Mr. Wozniak played the matter down.
“I am kind of glad that it subsided quickly and has been rather low-key,” he said.
Mr. Wozniak said that, if asked, he would consider joining Apple’s board. “I have thought about that in recent years, but it’s not on my mind at all right now,” he said. “I think I have a better place at smaller companies looking at new ideas.”
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Wozniak’s possible future involvement with the company.
In 2006, Mr. Wozniak shut down Wheels of Zeus, another start-up, and he did not have a full-time job until taking the role at Fusion-io. - Elias1, on 02/06/2009, -0/+1That photo is from the iPhone launch day. The "post-it" is his place in line
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n79UgvAZ1I - arcticsoft, on 02/06/2009, -0/+1Ironically, my coworker has post-it notes all over the back of her iphone.
- houndeyex, on 02/06/2009, -1/+2Wow, an iPhone t-shirt. Classy. Is that a post-it note attached to it?
- bodger, on 02/07/2009, -0/+1"The module slides into certain slots inside servers."
I hate it when these articles get too technical. - Charlotte_Web, on 02/07/2009, -0/+1Kathy Griffin spent it all.
- bastardx, on 02/06/2009, -3/+3Does he want a bailout?
- groo68, on 02/06/2009, -1/+1What evidence did you need except "it's faster.
- clickmyface, on 02/06/2009, -2/+1take that back! obviously Segway loves him for who he is on the inside.
Until he exceeds the weight limit, then its game over man. - locotx, on 02/07/2009, -1/+0When Woz talks . . he always reminds me of the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz (*Lightbulb*) . . . Hmmmmm
- simpsond, on 02/06/2009, -2/+1Is it just me, or does his nostril look enormous? I'm sure it's a good thing for smell and taste, but I have never noticed it.
- Sneezyx, on 02/06/2009, -4/+1Woz had to go back to work; he blew all his savings on iPhones and Segways.
- therslweblog, on 02/06/2009, -4/+1Thought this was going to be a post about the singer from Marcy Playground!
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