Texas Instruments climbs aboard HP's Project Moonshot for low power servers

Texas Instruments has partnered with HP on the development of ARM-based chips, intended for low-powered servers.

The chips created will be the first in the industry to use the ARM Cortex-A15 architectures. The partnership comes from HP's Project Moonshot programme which aims to bring low-powered ARM chips to the server industry.

Texas Instrument's chips will be based on the firm's Keystone II offering, which uses ARM Cortex-A15 architecture. Cortex-A15 blueprints made headlines last year as a cost-efficient option for smartphones and tablets.

According to HP, the chips offer power-efficiency because of their integrated cores for network processing and I/O for severs.

HP claimed its Moonshot programme will build low-power servers for large-scale datacentres. A key task for the project will be to build out relations with partners and future clients during the server development process.

For Texas Instruments, the partnership is a welcomed opportunity. The struggling chip maker recently had to axe 1,700 members of its staff. Following the job cuts the firm reported it was going to move away from the mobile chip market and focus on its server division.

Ironically, a key reason for Texas Instruments failure in the mobile chip market was the growth of ARM-based chips. Mobile chips based on the ARM architecture have continued to gain moment in recent years.

A recently growing trend in the market has seen hardware developers build their own mobile chips based on the ARM-architecture. That development has caused firms like Texas Instruments to lose marketshare in an industry consistently growing with parity.

ARM's main competitor in the mobile market has quickly become Intel. Last year, saw the two firms move their competition in to the server chip arena.