New Marvell Sheeva Plug Development Kit

[Bosko]

The SheevaPlug is just 110mm (L) x 69.5mm (W) x 48.5 mm (H) and features a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva CPU with 512MB of flash memory and 512MB of DDR2 memory, the SheevaPlug provides what is said to be enough processing power and resources to run nearly any embedded computing application. As one would guess the PC plug doesn't consume much power and draws on average, less than five watts under normal operation compared to 25-100 Watts for a PC being used as a home server. The Marvell SheevaPlug also has Gigabit Ethernet for network connectivity as well as a USB 2.0 connector.

The software for the SheevaPlug includes multiple Linux distributions that follow the opensource model which makes the SheevaPlug an ideal platform on which to develop or port any application. The SheevaPlug development kit contains the SheevaPlug as well as all the software tools needed to develop applications for the platform.

Meanwhile expect the SheevaPlug to find plenty of new fans among the open-source community; it’ll play nicely with “multiple standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions”. Its eco-credentials are good, too, with Marvell claiming it uses less than one tenth of the power of a typical PC being used as a home server.

[Rebeccak]

The plug computer is also eco-friendly. It can be left plugged into a wall socket at all times, and uses low power to conserve energy and draws on average, less than five watts under normal operation compared to 25 to 100 watts for a PC being used as a home server.

Specifically, the SheevaPlug development platform uses a Kirkwood embedded processor based on an embedded 1.2GHz Sheeva CPU, equipped with 512 Mbytes of FLASH and 512 Mbytes of DRAM. Connection to the home network is via Gigabit Ethernet.

[Marco-D]

Peripherals such as direct attached storage can be connected using a USB 2.0 port. Multiple standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions are supported on the SheevaPlug development platform enabling rapid application development. One application of the SheevaPlug that Mukhopadhyay envisions is a sort of anti-virus solution for the home. Laptops and desktop computers both have anti-virus capability, yet it’s not easy to maintain.