As broadband speeds continue to increase and cloud computing becomes more of a household concept, high-performance processors are in high demand. It's a big reason why Cranberry Township's Netronome, a leading developer of semiconductor products, closed its Series D round with $23 million in mid-2010, bringing its total capital raised to a whopping $76 million.

The company's highly customizable network flow processors, acceleration cards and design/development tools are used for intelligent flow processing in network and communications devices. The chips the company develops reside in appliances designed for virtualizing  input/output in data centers and on line cards inside carrier networks that route information in real time. Netronome was a 2010 Red Herring North America 100 winner and has been nominated for several other awards.

Netronome has maintained consistency as it has grown. Its staff is up by nearly 25 percent since 2007, and 55 of its nearly 100 workers that were employed there at the end of that year are still there. Netronome first shipped product in 2006 and had grown revenues to more than $9 million by 2009.

The recent round of funding has allowed Netronome to expand sales, marketing and manufacturing and the company expects to more than double its sales this year. It is also looking to expand its facilities to include more office space, engineering laboratories, a support center, customer visit center and loading dock. 2010 was a third consecutive year of record growth for the company, which earned a 2011 Emerging Technology Excellence Award in Networking from trade publisher Virtual Intelligence Briefing.