Chip start-up applies mobile thinking to data centre

Smooth-Stone, a US semiconductor startup, has secured $48 million from chipmaker ARM other venture capitalists to build server processors based on mobile phone processor technology.

Smooth-Stone was promising to deliver a low power chip for data centre servers that will be aimed squarely at rivalling Intel's dominance in the server chip market.

"Our goal is to completely remove power consumption as an issue for the data centre," Smooth-Stone chief Barry Evans said.

"Imagine that change for companies with a large presence on the Internet."

Smooth-Stone was developing its power saving server chips on ARM's chip architecture, found in many mobile phones.

It had not set a timeframe for the delivery of its technology, but said in its statement the funding was for the "final" stages of development.

Apart from ARM, the funding syndicate announced today included Texas Instruments and Highland Capital Partners.