Fusion-Io names Steve Wozniak as Chief Scientist

Fusion-Io is getting a new Chief Scientist. This is going to be none other than Steve Wozniak Co-Founder of Apple. Fusion-Io is a small company that had the novel idea of using Flash memory to allow servers to access data much faster than from SAN arrays.

We had the chance to take a look at Fusionn-Io's offering and were extremely impressed with its performance.

By bringing Steve onboard Fusion-Io will be able to utilize his extensive and often unique engineering expertise to compliment Fusion-Io's already impressive product.

Read more here.

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.