Nvidia is developing its first CPU for PCs and servers, code-named Project Denver, which is based on the ARM architecture and also aimed at mobile devices. The Denver core will go into future Tegra chips, and special improvements will be made to server chips, said Steve Scott, chief technology officer of Nvidia's Tesla product line of enterprise graphics chips.

"There are some things we are doing that are particularly nice for our purposes. It will likely go into the Tesla line at some point," Scott said.

Nvidia's current presence in servers is mostly related to its Tesla graphics processors, which are being used in the world's fastest supercomputers to perform complex scientific and math calculations. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is building a supercomputer called Titan that will include Nvidia's Tesla processors and Advanced Micro Devices' 16-core Opteron CPUs to deliver a peak performance of up to 20 petaflops. The fastest supercomputer is Japan's K, which delivers a performance of 8 petaflops.

Scott did not share specific details on how Nvidia would tweak future Tegra chips for servers. However, the company has said that Project Denver chips will harness the parallel processing capabilities of Nvidia GPUs with ARM CPUs, which could boost server performance.

Most servers today run on Intel's Xeon and AMD's Opteron chips, but there is growing interest in low-power ARM processors as companies look to cut electricity bills. Analysts have said that while ARM processors may lack the performance and reliability to overtake traditional server chips for critical tasks, a large collection of lightweight ARM cores could process high volumes of Web-based transactions while drawing less power.