$100 Linux Wall-Wart Now Available

nerdyH sends us to LinuxDevices for a description of a tiny Linux device called the Marvell SheevaPlug. "A $100 Linux wall wart could do to servers what netbooks did to notebooks. With the Marvell SheevaPlug, you get a completely open (hardware and software) Linux server resembling a typical wall-wart power adapter, but running Linux on a 1.2GHz CPU, with 512MB of RAM, and 512MB of Flash. I/O includes USB 2.0, gigabit Ethernet, while expansion is provided via an SDIO slot. The power draw is a nightlight-like 5 Watts. Marvell says it plans to give Linux developers everything they need to deliver 'disruptive' services on the device." The article links four products built on the SheevaPlug, none of them shipping quite yet. The development kit is available from Marvell.

Comments

Re:Ethernet

[sowth]

Are you kidding? Not enough CPU power? 1.2 GHz is enough for me to do raytracing!

Anyway, if you are going to do video encoding and translate your camera's pics from raw, it is not as if you need to sit and watch it. Just let the device run and do the work. 5 Watts isn't that much.

Kids these days.

Re:Ethernet

[charlesnw]

I'm glad it doesn't have built in wifi. I'll simply attach an Atheros USB dongle with SMA connector and high gain antenna. Instant very high powered access point/storage system.

And a site you can actually load...

[llZENll]

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/100_linux_wallwart_launches.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

http://dailydiy.com/2009/02/24/100-linux-wall-wart-launches/

Mirror here

[winkydink]

http://www.networkmirror.com/MuDp_g5XY_ZJoCQZ/linuxdevices.com/news/NS9634061300.html

Re:Ethernet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

By the look of it, this is more of a polished dev kit than a shelf-ready product. Marvell, typically, sells silicon, not widgets, so that would be standard for them. Also, TFA mentions schematics being available under some sort of free licence, and a bunch of companies already building devices based on this thing.

I suspect that products derived from this model will tend to have more in the way of peripherals; but as a dev kit that requires no special handling or equipment, and is priced within the range of virtually any student, linux hacker, or general tinkerer, this looks like a fun bit of kit. I know I'm tempted.

Re:Ethernet

[Nursie]

"I'm just not quite sure what I could use it for. It's too underpowered for video encoding/decoding,"

It could probably do a bit of that, transcoding and serving anyway.

This sounds like an absolutely perfect replacement for my Linksys NSLU2. It's only 266MHz and has 32MB of RAM. At the moment I have one doing mail/web server duty and one running torrentflux-b4rt and mediatomb, streaming music and video to my PS3 and to my machine at work.

That second one is straining to keep up, this little box sounds like it fits the bill perfectly. Similarly powered NAS boxes cost multiple hundreds.

versus NSLU2

[bcrowell]

It's interesting to compare this to the Linksys NSLU2, which I'm using as a home music server.

............Marvell NSLU2
price ($).....100 67 (amazon.com)
memory (MB)...512 32
flash (MB)....512 8
ethernet......yes yes
usb.......... yes yes, 2 ports

So I guess with the Marvell box you get somewhat higher specs, but I'm not sure you really need the higher specs. For most applications, you're going to attach a keychain usb drive to these things, and then the internal flash becomes irrelevant. 32 MB of memory may not sound like much these days, but it's actually plenty for a file server, music server, home automation system, etc. The main advantage I could see to the Marvell is that it sounds a little more open. Linksys ships the NSLU2 in a configuration where it's not really a general-purpose linux box, and you have to go through some hassles to get a real linux on it where you can install packages, etc. Linksys does, however, officially bless the use of third-party linix distros on the NSLU2.