Do you know Realtek? Some friends may have reacted, it seems that the audio manager of their computer is the name, and there seems to be a crab on the interface. If you open your computer device manager and look at the audio controller and network adapter, you can often see the name of Realtek, which is Realtek.

Realtek Semiconductor Corp. (English: Realtek Semiconductor Corp.), founded in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan on October 21, 1987, ranked ninth among the top ten IC design companies in the world in 2019. The network card and sound card produced in its early days are called "crab card" by the industry because its logo is a small crab with a full sense of circuit written RMC:

The story of Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. began a long, long time ago.

In 1962, Ye Chongde founded West German Organic, mainly producing "Tiger Balm Oil" and "Dernai Mouthwash".

At that time, Ye Chongde had a leather chemical factory in addition to West German Organic. Both industries have been managed by a large house for a long time.

In order for everyone to clarify this relationship later, I will briefly insert the situation of the Ye family members:

Ye Chongde has two wives, Dafang has three sons Ye Gongchao, Ye Baichang, and Ye Gonglong; Erfang also has three sons: Ye Jiawen, Ye Boyen, and Ye Nanhong.

In the 1970s, due to poor management, the chemical plant closed down, and the pharmaceutical plant also assumed debts of up to 60 million Taiwan dollars (about 12 million yuan) due to guarantees. At this time, Ye Jiawen, who graduated from university, took up the important task of saving the family business. Before Ye Chongde passed away, she had already paid off her debts and revitalized the family industry. After his father passed away, Ye Jiawen naturally became the head of West Germany.

The Ye family, like most of the wealthy families, due to the discord between the two houses, after Ye Zhongde‘s death, Dafang and Erfang also started a 17-year battle for property.

Ye Jiawen‘s ideal is not only to do a good job in the West Germany left by her father, but also in the battle for heritage, West Germany‘s organic industry will inevitably become a major focus. So Ye Jiawen was about to create another world. He saw the future of Taiwan’s semiconductors, so he invested his younger brothers Ye Boyen, Ye Nanhong and their classmates (several R&D engineers from UMC) with the funds obtained from his own operation in West Germany. Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. was founded in Hsinchu Science and Technology Park, Taiwan on October 21, 1987.

The chip empire of the three brothers of the Ye family

After the family legacy struggle, Ye Jiawen knew home and everything. Later, Ye Jiawen founded Hong Yi International, a semiconductor trading company, to represent Realtek and other semiconductor manufacturers. Ye Nanhong led a team to Zhuhai to establish Actions IC, which is the famous Zhuhai Actions in the field of MP3 chips. So far, Yejia‘s industries include: West German Organic, Hongyi International, Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. and Actions in Zhuhai.

At the beginning of its establishment, Realtek mainly focused on graphics chips and audio chips. After the integration of resources in 1993, three business divisions including communication networks, computer peripherals and consumer products were established.

Realtek has a wide range of network and audio chip fields. You can take a look at webcams, card readers, external network cards (USB network cards), Bluetooth, routers, wireless APs and other cost-effective products that we use every day. There is the shadow of Realtek.

But it is indeed the same as you think, most of the small crabs are cost-effective. And what his family does is mainly SoC (System-on-a-Chip), which is a highly integrated chip. A chip has everything and can be used by connecting peripheral circuits. When I talked about MediaTek, what kind of manufacturer likes high integration is naturally a small manufacturer, so Realtek is no exception. It is mainly used in the integration of many low-end products. It is about cost performance. Of course, its audio and Network control chips are integrated on their motherboards by most motherboard manufacturers due to their high cost performance, but the high-end ones are Intel and Broadcom network chips. Therefore, in the onboard market, audio is basically his own chip. Friends, just open the task manager and take a look.

Realtek is also involved in other market industries, such as:

1. Router

In addition to Huawei’s own chips, there are also Qualcomm and Intel, but most manufacturers still use three brands: Broadcom, MTK and Realtek, and Realtek and MediaTek are basically the same. It is a low-end home router.

Tenda AC23 uses Realtek‘s plan, 189 yuan. Basically, they are all 100 yuan gears, and now MediaTek is used more than Realtek.

2. Bluetooth headset industry integrating audio and wireless technologies

At the end of 2018, RTL8763B, a TWS true wireless Bluetooth headset 5.0 solution, was launched. But it is mainly used for some brands around 100 yuan and Huaqiangbei headphones.

Such as the early QCY T1/T1S

Of course, in the Bluetooth headset market, it is far inferior to Taiwan‘s AirPods. Huaqiangbei‘s airpods use AirPods‘ cores.

3. There are also web cameras, but they are all low-end products.

Of course, in addition to the above products, Realtek also provides wireless network solutions for in-vehicle systems, and is also involved in the main control chip of solid-state hard drives. ADATA’s entry-level product XPG S11 LITE (M.2 interface NVMe protocol) uses Realtek’s RTS5763DL

On the whole, Realtek has a wide range of operations, but mainly its network control chips and audio conversion chips. Especially the audio chips on the current motherboard are basically Realtek.