Marvell, the chip maker that has come to notoriety recently off the back of its chips, which happen to power a number of ebooks in the market, has released a new offering that it believes will make a $99 tablet a reality.

While Apple's iPad will start at $499 in the US, that hasn't stopped the company creating something a little more "basic" that could make its way in to schools around the world - possibly harking back to times when children used to use an even simpler form of wax tablet.

"For about $99, Marvell's Moby tablet prototype promises to change the way students learn by delivering an always-on, high performance multimedia tablet featuring live, real-time content, 1080p full-HD and 3D media, and full Flash Internet", says the company.

Claiming to solve the problem of out of date textbooks that are too heavy for students to carry (often in excess of 15% of their body weight in school books and supplies according to one study) the hope is that the Moby tablet will solve all this without breaking the bank.

The new model will feature a gigahertz-class processor, 1080p full-HD encode and decode functionality as well as Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM/GPS connectivity all running either Android or Windows Mobile.

No word on when your kids will be asking you to cough up the cash for one at the moment.