Small form factor (SFF) computing has shown us that computers can get smaller, but can they get even smaller ? What about the size of the plug (albeit a big plug!)? Marvell seem to think so and have produced a computing platform that is literally Plug-And-Go.

The Plug Computer 3.0 runs a 2 Ghz Armada 300 processor and allows up to 2 GB of flash memory and 1 GB of embedded memory. For storage the device can contain a 120 GB 1.8” SATA based hard drive. The device also manages to cram in a USB 2.0 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port and the whole thing runs on an “always-on” Linux variaton.

A number of manufacturers are picking up the specification so we can expect to be plugging in our new computers pretty soon. One of the more exciting developments is from Ionics whose plug-in device is about the size of a typical power charger and runs an 1.2 Ghz processor, 512MB Ram, with 512MB Flash storage, USB 2.0 port, Giga LAN port, and Linux (no hard drive storage in order to keep the physical size down).

To learn more visit Plugcomputer.org.

To learn move about the Ionics Plug Computer visit the Ionics website.