marvell

I blogged about Marvell's SheevaPlug computer awhile ago, and Monday I got to do some exclusive hands-on testing with the first prototype of the machine.

This is a very simple and ultracompact computer that has 1.2GHz CPU, 512MB of flash memory storage, and 512MB DRAM under the hood. The only peripheral connections it supports are a USB 2.0 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The prototype comes with a 8GB ScanDisk thumb drive as its external storage, which makes it a very unique network-attached storage (NAS) solution.

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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, … Read more

To avoid a trademark problem should we call it gnetbook, pnetbook or knetbook? Cooley thinks all the ideas are pretty. Google wants to mind your power for you, but if they treat that data like they do your posts on blogger you may find your dryer deleted without notice.

Sony INT-W250 WebTV High-Speed Linkup http://www.theonion.com/

You have until the end of the day to download Windows 7 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10160285-56.html

Google PowerMeter http://www.google.org/powermeter/howitworks.html

Google deleting blog posts without warning http://www.laweekly.com/2009-02-05/music/google-39-s-new-killer-app-why-are-music-bloggers-39-posts-disappearing-and-who-is-deleting-them/all… Read more

It looks like wiser heads--or at least those who could be made to recognize a great PR opportunity--have prevailed at AMC.

If you're one of the many hooked fans of the cable channel's hit show, Mad Men, which chronicles the goings-on at a fictional 1960s New York ad agency, and you're also a Twitter user, you might have found yourself eagerly following tweets from folks like Don Draper, Roger Sterling, or Peggy Olson.

And getting people to follow the show's characters probably seemed like a clever way of using Twitter for marketing.

Except that AMC had … Read more

A colleague recently asked if I knew why semiconductor stocks significantly underperformed the market over the past five years, even though chip sales have seen double-digit growth during the same period. Being a veteran of the industry, I surprised both of us by not knowing the answer. So I decided to find out.

First, the facts. The PHLX semiconductor sector index (SOX) declined at a rate of 2.9 percent per year over the past five years, while Merrill Lynch's semiconductor index exchange-traded fund (SMH) declined 1.0 percent per year.

The Nasdaq, on the other hand, experienced a 4.8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during the same period. Likewise, the Dow and S&P 500 respectively grew 3.7 percent and 3.9 percent annually.

Indeed, the semiconductor sector has significantly underperformed the broad market. … Read more

When the visual effects and animation wizards at Industrial Light & Magic started working on Paramount Pictures film Iron Man, their biggest challenge was creating a suit for the title character that was part CGI (computer-generated imagery) and part real costumery.

If you're not familiar with Iron Man, it's the story of Tony Stark, a genius billionaire industrialist who's also a bit of a jerk and who designs and sells weapons. In the film's opening sequences, Stark is demonstrating one of his weapons in some unspecified country near Afghanistan when he is captured by terrorists who … Read more

On Tuesday, I received an invitation to a special Wednesday screening in San Francisco of the forthcoming Paramount film, Iron Man, which opens officially on Friday.

This actually was the second invitation I had received to a screening--the first was for a Tuesday night showing that I was, sadly, unable to attend in the end. And it was looking a whole lot like the Wednesday one wouldn't work either.

But now I'm thinking I may have to work extra hard to make it.

That's because I read this evening that after TechCrunch announced Tuesday that it was … Read more

Just in time for next month's Iron Man action and CGI cinematic extravaganza comes this one-of-a-kind, custom-modded Iron Man action figure from Jin Saotome. Painted to resemble Tony Stark's gadget-obsessed hero after a serious bender, and based on a Marvel Movie Legends Iron Man figure, the alcohol-poisoned hero doesn't come with a Great White Telephone from which he can call Ralph.

It does, however, come with several miniature beer cans and a mini bottle of Bacardi that dear, dear Tony Stark probably swiped from a Paris Hilton Barbie. Painted in all the hues of the contents of … Read more

The iPhone is a mobile Internet device. Just in case you forgot, ARM wants to remind you that before the Intel Atom processor there was the iPhone and its handful of ARM processors. Yeah, it's a MID too.

Listening to Intel, a casual observer might believe that the world's largest chipmaker is single-handedly creating the class of tiny devices called mobile Internet devices or MIDs.

But ARM processors have been powering small, low-power devices since 1985. There was the Psion series of handhelds, the Apple Newton, Nintendo DS, and, today, products like the Microsoft Zune. All used or … Read more