Masses to Marvell at tiny wall plug computer?

You might have heard of or even used a powerline network adapter, such as the one made by Netgear that plugs directly into the wall. Now think of a similar-looking device that's an entire computer.

Marvell on Tuesday introduced a new kind of personal computer, called SheevaPlug, along with its Plug Computing initiative. The idea is to make make a high-performance, ultracompact, and green computer that consumers can plug right into a wall power socket.

Because the SheevaPlug draws less than a tenth of the power of a typical PC being used as a home server, according to Marvell, it can be left on all the time. And although it is very similar to a powerline adapter in shape and size, the SheevaPlug computer contains a gigahertz-class processor to offer PC-like performance.