Marvell has been showing off its new system-on-a-chip system which is named after an abortive invasion of the UK. The Armada 310 system-on-a-chip is built with an ARMv5 processor between 500MHz and 1GHz that consumes less than 1 watt of power. The Spanish Armada terrified the UK when it was in port in the 16th century but was defeated by a handful of British ships and then sunk by a storm.

Fixed on a 15 x 15mm FCBGA (Flip Chip Ball Grid Array), the Armada 310 offers tons of i/o options, such as two Gigabit Ethernet MACs, two SATA 2.0 ports, two PCIe ports, USB 2.0, and DDR2/3. Marvell showed off its Plug Computing initiative last year with the release of its SheevaPlug development platform. It wants to build low-cost, low-power CPUs that manage and connect devices with each other.

One popular design is the Pogoplug, a tiny server that connects to any USB storage device and makes their contents available on the Web. The little pink box can do this with just 5 Watts of power. However if the spec of the Armada 310 is correct it can do all this with a watt of power. The Armada 310 system on a chip is selling to manufacturers right now for less than $15 when purchased in bulk.