Have you ever heard of powerline network adapters, such as the ones that plug directly into the wall? Probably you have. Now think of a similar-looking device that is an entire computer. Networking conponent manufacturer Marvell has created a line of plug computers that is about to revolutionize the servers' world.

Marvell's SheevaPlug is a high-performance, ultracompact and „environmentally friendly“ computer that people can plug right into a wall power socket. Since the SheevaPlug uses less than 1/10th of the power of a typical PC being used as a home server, it can be left on all the time. Not only that, even though it is very similar to a powerline adapter in size and shape, the SheevaPlug computer contains a powerful gigahertz-class processor that can give this plug computer a performance similar to that of normal PCs.

The SheevaPlug computer uses a Marvell Kirkwood processor running at 1.2GHz, has 512MB of flash memory and 512MB DRAM, and also comes with a Gigabit Ethernet to connect to a network. This plug computer has one USB 2.0 port that can be used to connect to any networking and storage devices.

SheevaPlug does not use the Windows OS but it supports multiple standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions. The only way to interact with the units is through a Web browser.

Developers, good news! If you want to find out what this computer can do, there is also a SheevaPlug Development Kit available on Marvell's website!