Hi, Let me preface with the fact I am the visual computing product manager at Fusion-io.
Fusion-io technology (we call ioMemory) is very different from storage. Although the hardware part looks familiar as it uses standard NAND memory, the way it's presented to the computer is unique. Instead of using a storage controller (sandforce, indilinx,...) like SSD drives, the Fusoin-io card is presented to the host system like memory. The Fusion-io technology is not the hardware but rather the software component called VSL which attaches the NAND memory to the CPU directly as a memory device (as opposed to storage). This has many advantages like providing extremely low latency (how fast the card finds the data you are looking for) which is critical for database applications. It also allows for incredible speed between the fusion-io card and a GPU for instance (we showed 12 uncompressed 1080p video streams playing simultaneously on a single workstation on the nVidia both at Siggraph last year, that's 3GB/s). I am generalizing a bit here but in your system the table of content for your RAM is stored in the L1,L2 cache inside your cpu. This allows the CPU to quickly target what it needs to get out of RAM. The table of content of the ioMemory device is stored in your RAM, it's basically a new tier of memory in your computer after the L cache and RAM; unlike storage which goes through a different stack and subsystem which introduces latency. To make it easy to use the VSL makes the Fusion-io device show up like a hard-drive but don't be fooled, it is being addressed by the CPU at almost the speed of RAM. We have lots of case studies and documents on the Fusion-io website and feel free to contact our sales guys or chat with someone on our site we will be happy to discuss it with you and see if it makes sense for your needs. Our products are used to accelerate everything from the biggest social media websites to the 3D conversions of hollywood blockbusters...
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