Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's involvement in the computer industry has been largely tangential for the past couple decades, but as an inveterate tinkerer, he probably couldn't stay out forever. Utah-based storage startup Fusion-io has announced that Wozniak will become the new chief scientist for the company. Woz started working with the company in October 2008, when he was named to Fusion-io's board.
According to the New York Times , the company is working on new storage technologies that leverage flash memory: "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."
Douglas Babb, the chief IT systems architect at Hill Air Force Base, one of Fusion-io's customers, told the paper that Fusion-io's product can reduce storage expenses by 90 percent as well as significantly increase the speed of operations, reducing extensive calculation time from days to hours or minutes.
No word yet on when Woz will start work, nor if he has already sold his $7 mil house in Los Gatos, California--nor if he plans on Segwaying the entire way to Utah for company meetings.
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