The Marvell plug computer is designed to be left plugged into a wall socket at all times. Marvell said it draws less than five watts under normal operation on average, compared to 25-100 watts for a PC being used as a home server.
The platform is built using Marvell’s Kirkwood series system-on-chip design with a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva CPU processor, 512Mbytes of FLASH and 512Mbytes of DRAM.
The plug also features a 2.0 USB port to allow users to run applications that require a hard disk or other peripheral.
It connects to an existing network using Gigabit Ethernet. This type of device eliminates the need for an always-on PC to power the network.
Users can deploy the plug computer for media sharing or for backup services, said Marvell.