Wozniak Accepts Post at a Storage Systems Start-Up

SAN 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.

Mr. Babb said the amount of time it takes for tasks like modeling jet wings or analyzing manufacturing and supply data can be reduced from days to just hours or even minutes 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 agreements 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.