Q&A: Why Apple's co-founder is hot on solid state storage

Computerworld - Earlier this year, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak accepted the position of chief scientist at start-up solid state drive company Fusion-io. It's the first time since 1972, when he worked in Hewlett-Packard Co's calculator division, that he's held a technologist's position for a company that wasn't his own.

Since joining the company, Wozniak hasn't widely discussed why he chose to become a member of Fusion-io's advisory board and then its chief scientist. Computerworld spoke to him about that choice and what he sees as the future of solid state storage technology. The following are excerpts from that interview.

Becoming a member of any company's board that you didn't help create seems uncharacteristic of you, so why did you join Fusion-io's? I joined because I saw a remarkable vision, but more than the product vision, I saw the people who created the vision. Their overall design methodologies lead to good clean products. That's what I saw in these people. I really expected to be invited to join the advisory board, but I sort of got a position in the company, which was exciting because by then I was so sold on the company.

And, I'm sort of a purist. I like things with electrons moving instead of heavy metal parts -- maybe because I didn't grow up as a mechanical person. Rather than spinning atoms, I like to get down to electrons, and who knows, maybe in the future it will be photons.

You've never really been a storage guy. What attracted you to this technology? Well, I was a storage guy really early - in floppy disks. I don't come from the heavy-duty storage area where you've got RAID arrays and fiber optic channels. But, actually, the way I approached even designing my floppy disk structures was to take out a lot of middle man technology that wasn't needed - to look at the overall problem and get from the start to the finish in one quick jump. And, I saw those same principles had been applied in designing [Fusion-io's] product.

Also, I've been close to a lot of people who worked in data centers - good friends -- and it's just like data centers always have huge racks and racks of equipment. And, almost every entity in the world is basing its operations on servers and disk storage, so it's almost unlimited. So [with Fusion-io] you're not confined to one little niche.