Lance L. Smith

As chief operating officer, Lance Smith brings more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and executive experience in microprocessor, computer technology and storage industries.

Prior to serving as senior vice president of engineering and senior vice president of product marketing at Fusion-io, he was vice president and general manager for the scalable processor solutions business unit at RMI Corporation, recently acquired by Netlogic Microsystems, where he successfully brought the industry's leading multi-core, multi-threaded XLR and XLS processors to networking, telecommunications, and embedded markets.

Before RMI, Mr. Smith was vice president of business development at Raza Foundries, a broadband networking and communications investment company. There he worked with the invested portfolio companies from initial contact to investment to company building including interim executive roles at Pacific Broadband, acquired by Juniper Networks, Acciro acquired by Intel, and Omnishift acquired by Tadpole Technologies Plc. He also served as the director of commercial segment marketing and director of technical marketing for the computational products group of Advanced Micro Devices, the x86 microprocessor and video card maker, and had management roles at technology companies NexGen, Inc. and Chips and Technologies, Inc.

Mr. Smith holds patents in the area of microprocessor bus architectures and received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Santa Clara University, where he focused on digital electronics and semiconductor physics.