
Wozniak Accepts Post at a Storage Systems Start-Up - twampss
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/technology/business-computing/05wozniak.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
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tsally
Something that's really impressed me about Steve Wozniak is how reserved he
is. On the one hand you have a man like Steve Jobs who has confidence and
fanfare abound, and then you have Wozniak who has a much quieter type of
confidence. For example, when Wozniak returned to Apple in 1983, according to
his biography he wanting nothing more than an engineering position. I wouldn't
be watching for crazy media attention or dramatic press releases, but I
wouldn't be surprised if Wozniak and this start-up come out with something
revolutionary in a few years.

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SwellJoe
Whoah. It must take some balls to ask Woz to join your startup. It seems kinda
like asking Pete Townshend to join your garage band.

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acangiano
The article tells us a different story, but generally speaking, it's
remarkable what you can get by simply asking.

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jrp
Indeed; recall Feynman and parallel computer.

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timtrueman
Funny about a week ago I heard directly from someone using one of the Fusion-
io cards and let's just say the real world performance was rather impressive.
I definitely wanted to invest in them right then and there. I'm not sure I can
quote numbers (without permission that is) but let's just say many very busy
physical DB servers were consolidated onto far fewer servers (all servers had
the same specs except the Fusion-io SSD) and even with fewer servers the
load/utilization was reduced.

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albahk
I remember a company in Australia called Platypus Technology
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_Technology>) came up with something
similar whereby they loaded up a full-size PCI card with 4-8Gb of RAM and then
this would appear as a 4Gb hard-drive to the OS. Then you just place the DB
files or swap files onto this drive and Boom! instant speed upgrade for DB or
OS doing disk-work... Apparently they are no longer around.

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rbanffy
I dunno... Those 4-8 GB of RAM would be better used on the motherboard as disk
cache.

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hachiya
That's what I was wondering. How would the Platypus technology be better than
a traditonal RAMdisk?

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dfranke
This is incredibly cool. I hope the schematics he designs here become publicly
available some day; nothing created by an engineer of Woz's caliber ought to
be lost to posterity.

That's an alarming photograph though. I see now where Steve Jobs' weight went.

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andr
I have always been surprised by how much Woz is still just a hacker at heart.
He justs wants to tinker with stuff and doesn't care much about business. The
world on the other hand expects him to always have his eye on revolutionary,
world changing projects. That's why he raised $200m at WoZ Inc.'s IPO, before
he announced he was doing GPS tags.

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rbanffy
So, how much does it cost to work there?

Is there a cheaper package that covers just hanging around?

;-)

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Silentio
Regarding the mention of Woz's interest in joining the board at Apple. What
exactly would his role be there. I know Woz is an engineer, and a well
respected one at that, but Woz seems like he just likes to tinker with things
on a personal level. Would Woz have that kind of involvement with technology
on the Apple board?

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comatose_kid
By the way, for those that want to learn more, the CTO of Fusion-IO will be
discussing the nitty-gritty in Santa Clara on the 17th:

[http://www.californiaconsultants.org/Events.cfm/item/109/ran...](http://www.californiaconsultants.org/Events.cfm/item/109/range/1)

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omouse
sounds intense and very useful. glad to see the Woz back at it :D

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robfitz
i heard mr. woz was recently working on [significantly] cheaper & more
efficient housing. does anyone know to what extent that was pursued and how it
turned out?

