Realtek
Encyclopedia
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| Type | Public company Public company This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets... |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Location | Hsinchu Hsinchu Hsinchu City is a city in northern Taiwan. Hsinchu is popularly nicknamed "The Windy City" for its windy climate.Hsinchu City is administered as a special municipality within Taiwan . The city is bordered by Hsinchu County to the north and east, Miaoli County to the south, and the Taiwan Strait... , Taiwan Taiwan Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following... , ROC Republic of China The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor... |
| Key people | Po-Len Yeh |
| Industry Industry Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,... |
Semiconductor Semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter... |
| Products Product (business) In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced... |
Integrated circuit Integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material... semiconductor Semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter... chips |
| Revenue Revenue In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover.... |
$777,000,000 (2010) |
| Employees | 1600 (2010) |
| Website Website A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet... |
Realtek Website (Taiwan) |
Realtek Semiconductor Corp. , a fabless IC design house
Fabless semiconductor company
A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry...
situated in the Hsinchu Science Park
Hsinchu Science Park
Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park is an industrial park established by the government of the Republic of China on December 15, 1980 with investment from the Kuomintang. It straddles Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County on the island of Taiwan....
, Hsinchu
Hsinchu
Hsinchu City is a city in northern Taiwan. Hsinchu is popularly nicknamed "The Windy City" for its windy climate.Hsinchu City is administered as a special municipality within Taiwan . The city is bordered by Hsinchu County to the north and east, Miaoli County to the south, and the Taiwan Strait...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, was founded in October 1987, and subsequently approved as a listed company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange
Taiwan Stock Exchange
The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation is a financial institution, located in Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan. The TSEC was established in 1961 and began operating as a stock exchange on 9 February 1962...
in 1998. As of March 31, 2010, Realtek employs 1600 people, of which more than 700 have research and development expertise.
Products
Realtek manufactures and sells a wide variety of products throughout the world, and its product lines can be broadly categorized into two subdivisions: Communications Network ICs, and Computer Peripheral and Multimedia ICs. Included among the communications network IC products manufactured and provided by Realtek are: network interface controllers (both the traditional 10/100M EthernetEthernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
controllers and the more advanced gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...
controllers), physical layer
Physical layer
The physical layer or layer 1 is the first and lowest layer in the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking. The implementation of this layer is often termed PHY....
controllers (PHYceivers), network switch
Network switch
A network switch or switching hub is a computer networking device that connects network segments.The term commonly refers to a multi-port network bridge that processes and routes data at the data link layer of the OSI model...
controllers, gateway
Gateway (telecommunications)
In telecommunications, the term gateway has the following meaning:*In a communications network, a network node equipped for interfacing with another network that uses different protocols....
controllers, wireless LAN
Wireless LAN
A wireless local area network links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method , and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network...
ICs, as well as ADSL router controllers. In particular, the RTL8139 series 10/100M Fast Ethernet controllers met their height during the late 90’s, and continued to take up a significant, and eventually predominant share in the worldwide market in the following years. Those devices categorized as Realtek’s computer peripheral and multimedia IC products consist of the traditional AC'97 audio codec
Audio codec
All codecs are devices or computer programs capable of coding or decoding a digital data stream or signal.The term audio codec has two meanings depending on the context:...
s, the High Definition Audio
Intel High Definition Audio
Intel High Definition Audio refers to the specification released by Intel in 2004 for delivering high-definition audio that is capable of playing back more channels at higher quality than previous integrated audio codecs like AC'97...
codecs, card reader
Memory card
A memory card or flash card is an electronic flash memory data storage device used for storing digital information. They are commonly used in many electronic devices, including digital cameras, mobile phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, and video game consoles...
controllers, clock generator
Clock generator
A clock generator is a circuit that produces a timing signal for use in synchronizing a circuit's operation. The signal can range from a simple symmetrical square wave to more complex arrangements...
s, IEEE 1394 ICs, and LCD controllers.
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
on-board audio market segment. Presently the ALC850 and RTL8139 are particular OEM favorites, offering low prices, and basic feature sets. RTL8139-based NICs are dubbed "crab cards" in Taiwan, alluding to the crab-like appearance of the Realtek logo.
It has been announced or projected, on several different occasions, that Realtek will, in the future, focus its R&D resources in the field of digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
technologies, as well as more advanced wireless communications technologies such as ultra-wide band (UWB) communications and the yet-to-be-realized 802.11n standard. It seems clear that Realtek has been setting its eye on pursuing the Holy Grail of the anticipated new applications and needs derived from the concept of Digital home proposed by Intel.
The Realtek is also a main supplier of B/G/N wifi module for the US based wifi adapter manufacturer UAWIFI. The company decided to use RTL8188 board in their new high end wifi adapter UA3 as it is the most reliable and powerful adapter on the market. More information regarding newest RTL8188 chip set can be found at http://www.uawifi.com or http://www.realtek.com.tw
Awards
Realtek's single-chip fast ethernet controller, the RTL8139, receives "Best Component" and "Best of Show" awards at Computex-Taipei '97. Seven years later, its dual-band triple-mode WLAN solutions, which includes a baseband processor/media access controller RTL8185L and an RF chip RTL8255, again receive “Best Choice of Computex” award at Computex-Taipei 2004.Criticism and praise of quality
In the kernel source codeSource code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
for the FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, one device driver
Device driver
In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
file goes as far as calling the 8139 Fast Ethernet card "probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made", noting that "the RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' The 8139 supports bus-master DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance gains that bus-master DMA usually offers."
On the other hand, OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
developer Theo de Raadt
Theo de Raadt
Theo de Raadt , born May 19, 1968 in Pretoria, South Africa, is a software engineer who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects, and was a founding member of the NetBSD project.- Childhood :...
has praised Realtek, saying "the (newish) Realtek Gigabit Ethernet chips are not too bad at all, and there's lots of documentation. So maybe the Taiwanese products are a little bit later to the market, but they are simpler and robust once they do make it to the market."
Security breach
According to the comprehensive analysis of StuxnetStuxnet
Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in June 2010. It initially spreads via Microsoft Windows, and targets Siemens industrial software and equipment...
virus released by Symantec in 2011, a Realtek's digital certificate for Windows got compromised, then revoked by Verisign
VeriSign
Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...
: "The attackers would have needed to obtain the digital certificates from someone who may have physically entered the premises of the two companies [Realtek and JMicron
JMicron
JMicron Technology Corporation is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits which mostly produces Serial ATA and related controller chips....
] and stole them, as the two companies are in close physical proximity." states the report.
See also
- List of Taiwanese companies
- Network interface card
- Sound cardSound cardA sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...
- RTL8139RTL8139Made by Realtek Semiconductor Corp, the RTL8139 is a family of network adapters.- Models :RTL8139C RTL8139C+ RTL8139D...