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Seeking to leverage flexible, innovative solutions from open source development communities, a Santa Clara-based company today launched its so-called “plug computing” initiative.

 

Officials at Marvell – a storage, communications and consumer silicon solutions provider – say their “SheevaPlug” supports high-performance, lower-power, small computers for managing and storing digital media assets.

 

Small enough to plug into a wall socket, a plug computer is designed to draw so little power that it can always be left on – and, Marvell (News - Alert) officials say, unlike other embedded devices in the home, it contains a gigahertz-class processor to offer PC class performance.

 

Basically, a plug computer is a small, powerful computer that connects to an existing network using Gigabit Ethernet. The device eliminates the need for an always-on PC in the digital home to access services such as media servers, file sharing and backup software, which need to be installed on a PC.

 

Importantly, officials at Marvell say that they’ve created an open computing platform for developers in a consumer and eco-friendly form factor.

 

In an interview with TMCnet, Marvell’s product manager, Raja Mukhopadhyay, said the company is seeking to speed up the development and availability of innovative software and services in the home.

 

“Essentially what Marvell has done is take the computer in the home and present it in a standalone, separate manner in one device,” Mukhopadhyay told TMCnet. “It’s going to help high-level application players come and take something directly to market. People will not be beholden to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) anymore.”

 

Starting today, Marvell is making its Sheeva plug development kit (pictured right) available through its Web site, for $99.

 

“The idea is for developers to take the kit and software support we have, and they can build and create applications for it,” Mukhopadhyay told TMCnet.

 

All of the design, he said, from a hardware and software standpoint, is “open,” meaning reference design and schematics – and everything is available through Marvell’s Web site.

 

“If they want hardware changes, or software changes, they have them, because we sought to make a completely open platform,” Mukhopadhyay said. “The idea is to get the open source and application developer community excited, because this is what we see going forward.”

 

Here’s how Marvell diagrams the SheevaPlug’s place in the home:

 

 

In terms of software, Marvell is in the process of finalizing an API framework called “Raindrop,” which is expected to make it easy for third-party applications to run on the plug.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Industry insiders are hailing Marvell’s innovation as a sound way to hasten the logical evolution for the digital home – just as enterprise applications moved from servers to network appliances.

 

According to Hajime Naka of Buffalo Inc (News - Alert).: “Marvell is probably the only company that can pack so much processor performance into such a compact form factor.”

 

Early adopters of plug computing –  such as Axentra, Cloud Engines, Inc, CTERA and Eyecon Technologies, Inc.,  began launching Marvell-based products at the Consumer Electronics Show 2009.

 

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.

 

“All of the traffic coming into the home will go through the SheevaPlug, which has enough horsepower to cleanse it and then send it back to all clients hanging off of the home network,” he said. “Suddenly you don’t have to worry about each desktop. Now, all of your home devices are protected forever.”