Cortina Systems, a fabless semiconductor company that offers multi-service, multi-rate port processors based on analog and digital technology, has secured $30 million in a Series C round of financing. Lead funding participants included Canaan Partners and JAFCO Ventures. Cortina’s existing investors also contributed to the round.

Differentiating Cortina’s product from other integrated circuit solutions is that its port processors can be programmed to support different communications rates and protocols. Cortina indicates that this gives equipment vendors the capability to easily adapt the processor for different equipment for different applications, enabling network equipment companies to reduce engineering costs and reduce time to market. The port processors support different types of Ethernet and SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) network standards, which can help shrink the number of line cards needed to support network infrastructure needs. According to Eric Young, general partner of Canaan Partners, "We believe Cortina Systems stands alone as an innovator in its category. As equipment makers try to meet the market's demand for systems that support various types of network interfaces, we think they will increasingly turn to Cortina for flexible and cost-effective solutions."

Cortina, which is already supplying some large network equipment manufacturers with its product, was founded in 2001.  Cortina Systems has also integrated a number of other protocols. In addition to SONET and Ethernet, other integrated protocols that the company lists includes POS (Packet Over SONET):, ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), GFP (Generic Framing Procedure), RPR (Resilient Packet Ring) and XFI (10 Gigabit Serial Electrical Interface) protocols.