Calxeda, the company that first invented the concept of using ARM technology to slash data center power, today announced $55 million in additional funding, one of the largest semiconductor capital deals this year.

The funding is comprised of investments by Austin Ventures and Vulcan Capital plus additional participation by the firm's existing investors. Calxeda said it would use the funding to accelerate adoption in the emerging market for ultra-low power scalable computing. The company now employs over 100 people, with offices in Austin and Silicon Valley and subsidiaries across Asia.

"This significant infusion of capital will accelerate the exciting trajectory we've been on for the past four years," said Calxeda co-founder and CEO Barry Evans. "Businesses require a more efficient solution for the Web, Cloud, and Big Data. That is what Calxeda is now delivering and this funding will enable us to go bigger and faster." Calxeda claims that its processors deliver as much as a ten-fold improvement in energy efficiency compared to today?s commodity X86-based servers.

ARM processors may be used as a power-efficient alternative to x86 server chips.

Calxeda makes the 'EnergyCore' chip with a low-power ARM processor, which is used in experimental servers from Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

The current Calxeda chip is based on the Cortex-A9 ARM processor design.

The ARM processors are currently only 32-bit, though the chip designer has announced the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. Test servers with the new 64-bit architecture are expected to come out either late this year or early next year.