Marvell Introduces Plug Computing to Europe

Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. announced that developers in Europe can now purchase SheevaPlug development kits, outfitted for regional electrical specifications, through www.plugcomputer.org from Ionics EMS, Inc. and Globalscale Technologies.

In addition to broadening the outreach to application developers, Marvell is growing the plug computing ecosystem by working with retail vendors such as Buffalo, Inc., D-Link, LaCie and Seagate, who plan to launch retail versions of the plug computer for the consumer market.

"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," said Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group. "The open plug platform gives European developers the opportunity to create applications, services, and solutions that are only limited by their imaginations."

Marvell introduced the Plug Computing initiative to make high-performance, always on, always connected, and environmentally friendly computing readily available for developers and end-users. A Plug Computer is small enough to plug directly into a wall socket and is designed to draw so little power that it can be left on all of the time. Unlike other embedded devices in the home, it contains a gigahertz class processor that is designed to offer PC class performance.

"The wide range of applications created from the open-developer SheevaPlug platform serves both retail product partners and service providers," said Dr. Simon Milner, Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Business Unit, Consumer and Communications Business Group at Marvell Semiconductor. "We are thrilled to introduce SheevaPlug to the European developer community and look forward to seeing many new applications and new consumer product ideas developed and brought to market. Moreover, Marvell is delighted to collaborate with retail partners such as Buffalo, Inc., D-Link, LaCie and Seagate on delivering new levels of user experience to consumers."

The plug computing ecosystem is rapidly expanding to include a full value chain of product partners, application developers and educational institutions.

About the SheevaPlug Development Platform
The SheevaPlug development platform uses a Marvell Kirkwood processor based on an embedded 1.2GHz Sheeva(TM) CPU equipped with 512 Mbytes of FLASH and 512 Mbytes of DRAM. Connection to the home network is via Gigabit Ethernet. 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. SheevaPlug is designed to plug directly into a standard wall socket and is designed to draw less than one tenth of the power of a typical PC being used as a home server.