Marvell, a provider of storage, communications and consumer silicon products, has announced the release of its SheevaPlug development kit to the developers across the Europe.
The SheevaPlug development kit, developed for regional electrical specifications, is built using Marvell’s Kirkwood series system-on-chip (SoC) design, featuring a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva CPU processor, 512Mbytes of flash and 512Mbytes of DRAM memory. The plug comes with a 2.0 USB port to enable users to run applications that require a hard disk or other peripheral as well as Gigabit Ethernet for connection to the home network.
A plug computer is a small computer that connects to an existing network using Gigabit Ethernet. It reportedly eliminates the need for an always-on PC in the digital home to access these services.
In addition to expanding the outreach to application developers, Marvell is also working with BUFFALO, D-Link, LaCie and Seagate to launch retail versions of the plug computer for the consumer market.
Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group, said: “The Plug Computer is one of the more amazing technologies that have come out this decade and it has the potential to change the world. The open plug platform gives European developers the opportunity to create applications, services, and solutions that are only limited by their imaginations.”
The SheevaPlug model is available for European developers from GlobalScale Technologies for approximately £62.
