Marvell's Plug Computer

Message

cthisbear · #1 Post by **cthisbear** » Tue 24 Feb 2009, 22:03

" Analysis Opinion - Marvell announced today a new type of computer.
It's about the size of an AC to DC converting wall outlet plug, but is really a full SoC with a 1200 MHz CPU, built-in 512 MB Flash, 512 MB DRAM, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 support. It runs small versions of Linux, "

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41525/136/

Chris.

Lobster · #2 Post by **Lobster** » Wed 25 Feb 2009, 03:19

Interesting

It uses an ARM based CPU
http://www.marvell.com/technologies/cputech.jsp
(which we may begin supporting in a while - some efforts in this direction)

It has no monitor output
and only what I believe is a North American plug

So very much a specialised, niche, prototyping appliance

raffy · #3 Post by **raffy** » Wed 25 Feb 2009, 23:50

Very interesting and worth building Puppy for...

DMcCunney · #4 Post by **DMcCunney** » Thu 26 Feb 2009, 02:28

Lobster wrote:Interesting
It uses an ARM based CPU
http://www.marvell.com/technologies/cputech.jsp
(which we may begin supporting in a while - some efforts in this direction)

Yep. Marvell bought the former StrongARM division of Intel when Intel reorganized a while back. ARM CPUs are in all manner of devices.

It has no monitor output

If you can telnet/ssh in to a command line, that's not a big problem.

and only what I believe is a North American plug

Expect that to change if this gains traction. A different plug is dead easy to substitute.

So very much a specialised, niche, prototyping appliance

There are all manner of potential uses. One of the trends in computing has been migration of processing power. Peripherals are getting steadily smarter, and it's getting harder to point at one device and say "This is the brain". We're moving in the direction of cooperating specialized servers, each handling a particular set of functions.

My wireless router uses a MIPS CPU and runs a version of Linux, and has abilities I haven't even touched yet.

This device might be a media server, or an interface to a file server, or any one of a number of things. And given the form factor and low power consumption, I can see devices like it that don't plug into a wall wart, but can run off a battery. Server in your pocket, anyone?
______
Dennis

MagicZaurus · #5 Post by **MagicZaurus** » Thu 26 Feb 2009, 04:30

I also saw this yesterday.

Who is working on the port to ARM platform?

There is another interesting project which uses an ARM CPU. Beagleboard.org (http://www.beagleboard.org) is a tiny computer board based on ARM. I consider to buy that board, but will wait until end of March when the new version is available which has more RAM. From what I read it is not so easy to port to another CPU platform. At least not only a simple recompile on the new platform.

A lot of Smartphones also running on ARM CPUs. Would be definitely great if we could make a ARM-Puppy.

Cheers.

#6 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Thu 26 Feb 2009, 05:46

COOL! That little guy has more ram and processing power than the old computer under my bed currently acting as my personal SVN and Git server! And it takes up way less space and uses way less power. Only problem is a slight lack of storage space. Ah, but I see it has a USB slot, so that's a nonissue. You can pop in a small hub, then hook in both a wireless dongle and a 2GB flash drive. Neato. I wouldn't need the wireless dongle because I can put it right by my router, but that's an important option for a full blown house (as opposed to my dorm).

It has a USB port and runs linux - that means there are a million and seven possibilities. You can build entirely new devices that interface with it via USB, and you can link with existing devices to do all sorts of stuff. Home automation is an obvious option. Plug in a USB webcam and use it for surveillance. Add a wireless dongle and a harddrive and use it for remote storage tucked out of the way, independent of all the (often broken) PCs in the house, and since it's actually a computer in its own right it could also run an antivirus program on the data stored in it - it effectively becomes a self-scanning remote harddrive without the need to leave other machines on overnight to scan it - it scans in the background without disturbing anybody.

Or in my case, I'd use it to host my SVN and Git repos, because that would be much better on my conscience than running my full blown old computer, fans a whirring.

cb88 · #7 Post by **cb88** » Thu 26 Feb 2009, 06:42

@pizzasgood you might wanna consider the beagle board instead...

it has video out a built in sd card slot for extra storage (256 built in iirc prolly will be bumped up to 512 in march like the panodra has)

also it could serve as a basic media center

im not sure but the marvel might actually be slower than the beagle in lots of cases since the beagle has a floating point unit and several other extensions but lacks out of order execution

in any case the beagle board already has an active community whereas i doubt the wall wart even has a community yet does it?

MagicZaurus · #8 Post by **MagicZaurus** » Thu 26 Feb 2009, 07:15

I think the Marvel is just an announcement at this point of time. Yesterday I tried to go to the order page for the development kit and only got an empty page.

The beagleboard seems to be a bit more mature and is mainly driven by the open source community.

#9 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sat 28 Feb 2009, 00:06

Even cooler!

For the last year or so I've been intentionally avoiding looking at the latest developments in computer gadgetry, to avoid temptations to buy things I can't really afford. So I'm out of date with what the latest cool gizmos are. And I don't have the time to play with them anyways...

Maybe I need to change that and just tough it out, because there's some cool stuff out there that I really should be aware of, even if I can't have it (yet...

)

I do have a rather nifty little microcontroller that I recently had to assemble in my embedded microcontrollers class (we get to keep them). One of the pins seems to have failed (note to self: do not attempt to desolder things when running on only three hours of sleep and two candy bars). So I'll have to replace the microcontroller chip itself on Monday (used a dip socket, so that's easy). Still need to find a serial cable so I can program the thing from home instead of heading to the lab. I haven't even started trying to think of uses for it yet, because I'll just depress myself

I do know I'll find some fun projects for it though. Most definitely. And someday I will have free time. Well, what I'd call free time. My idea of relaxing looks a lot like work to other people. Can't help it, I'm a workaholic. I'd claim that I'll work until the day I die, but I doubt I'll have time for little things like death. Too much to do!

aarf · #10 Post by **aarf** » Sun 01 Mar 2009, 04:42

Lobster wrote: what I believe is a North American plug

the shape of the plug is not a problem, adapters to any shape you want exist and so far i havent encountered any national shape that uses an incompatible voltage for a common laptop or phone. some countries have (maybe now had) incompatible communication frequencies for some (maybe now older) phones.

downloaded the pdf info sheet and still couldnt figure this sheeva computer plug. doesnt seem to have an input socket for for the internet cable feed.

aarf · #11 Post by **aarf** » Sun 01 Mar 2009, 13:57

pdf
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/1766/shevaplug.pdf

got a better understanding image here

from http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp

Lobster · #12 Post by **Lobster** » Sun 01 Mar 2009, 16:49

MagicZaurus wrote: Who is working on the port to ARM platform?

amigo
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 899#258409

amigo · #13 Post by **amigo** » Sun 01 Mar 2009, 19:32

Before anyone gets excited about an ARM port, you should realize that there are many, many ARM 'flavors' and one size does not fit all. If I ever get to an ARM port it will have to be for a given hardware or group of devices which all have the same CPU.

MagicZaurus · #14 Post by **MagicZaurus** » Mon 02 Mar 2009, 03:32

Yes there are many different ARM processors, as ARM doesn't produce them themselves and just licenses the technology/core to other manufacturers.

I agree with Amigo that it only makes sense to make a port for a certain platform. That might be only become feasible once some ARM based netbooks hit the market.

Boo2themoon · #15 Post by **Boo2themoon** » Tue 03 Mar 2009, 15:46

These ARM powered Netbooks look interesting

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000 ... 753,00.htm

aarf · #16 Post by **aarf** » Tue 03 Mar 2009, 17:37

Boo2themoon wrote:These ARM powered Netbooks look interesting

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000 ... 753,00.htm

good info at that link.

more at http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/09/pega ... -netbooks/

this looks like the target cpu for amigo. got until june.
Freescale's brand new ARM i.MX515 processor

ndujoe1 · #17 Post by **ndujoe1** » Tue 03 Mar 2009, 17:47

What exactly does it take for Puppy LInux operate through an ARM processor. Does puppy need to be rewritten from the ground up to use and interface with ARM instruction set?

sunburnt · #18 Post by **sunburnt** » Tue 03 Mar 2009, 18:28

Run an existing ARM Linux console distro. on it for a Web server.
Or for a File server use it with USB attached HDs.
I'd think it'd have enough power to do either of those tasks.

DMcCunney · #19 Post by **DMcCunney** » Tue 03 Mar 2009, 23:10

ndujoe1 wrote:What exactly does it take for Puppy LInux operate through an ARM processor. Does puppy need to be rewritten from the ground up to use and interface with ARM instruction set?

No, Puppy has to be cross-compiled to run on ARM.

The Gnu Compiler suit separates compiling into two parts: a front-end parser that analyzes your source code, and a back end code generator that creates the actual machine language code the processor will run. It's possible to run GCC on one architecture, like Intel, but set it up to compile machine code intended for another, like ARM, in a process called cross-compiling.

Ideally, you would tell it to take the existing Puppy source code and recompile it for an ARM target, and Poof!, Puppy is running on ARM. In practice, there will probably things in the source that will need to be changed to successfully build for an ARM processor.

One of the reasons C, and later C++, became popular languages was that it's possible to write portable code that can be built and run on a variety of architectures from the same source code. But "possible" isn't the same thing as "easy", and there will be any number of things you may need to adjust or rewrite in trying to move to a different CPU.
______
Dennis

lwill · #20 Post by **lwill** » Mon 09 Mar 2009, 20:50

Another similar device:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/lin ... 6887963001

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Marvell's Plug Computer

Marvell's Plug Computer

very interesting

ARM netbooks

Re: ARM netbooks

ARM processing

Re: ARM processing