US start-up Smooth-Stone said it wants to hit up venture capital firms and semiconductor innovators for $48 million for the final development and market delivery of its high-performance, low-powered mobile phone chips for servers and data centers.

Smooth Stone's technology works on the premise that low-power virtues used in mobile phone technology can be also be applied to servers and data centers using its semiconductor and software solution.

Smooth Stone CEO Barry Evans said the combined solution can increase the density of computer resources while using less energy, cooling and space in the data center.

Smooth Stone already has ARM, Battery Venutres, Highland Capital Partners, Texas Instruments and Advanced Technology Investment Company on board.

"This kind of investment, the amount, and the strength of this syndicate is a strong endorsement for the innovation we are bringing to market,"Evans said.

ARM vice president of corporate business development Bruce Beckloff said Smooth Stone is hoping to attract companies that want to manage data center sprawl to its product offering.

"There is a strong market need for a new class of data center platforms that offer a significant improvement in performance from both the energy and density perspectives,"Beckloff said.

Smooth Stone was founded in January 2008. It joins a range of other start-ups also investigating the use of smartphone chips to create low-power servers.