Realtek

Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
瑞昱半導體股份有限公司

Type	Public company
Traded as	: 2379
Industry	Semiconductor
Founded	1987
Founder	Po-Len Yeh
Headquarters	Hsinchu, Taiwan
Key people	Nan-Horng Yeh (Chairman) Qiu Shunjian (General Manager)
Products	Integrated circuit semiconductor chips
Revenue	$1.029 billion (2014)
Number of employees	2,500 (2015)
Website	www.realtek.com.tw

Realtek Semiconductor Corp. (Chinese: 瑞昱半導體股份有限公司; pinyin: Ruìyù Bàndǎotǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), is a fabless semiconductor company situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan. It was founded in October 1987 and subsequently listed on the in 1998. Realtek currently manufactures and sells a variety of microchips globally and its product lines broadly fall into three categories: communications network ICs, computer peripheral ICs and multimedia ICs. As of 2015, Realtek employs 2,500 people, of whom 78% work in research and development.

Notable Realtek products include 10/100M Ethernet controllers (with a global market share of 70% as of 2003) and audio codecs (AC'97 and Intel HD Audio), where Realtek had a 50% market share in 2003 and a 60% market share in 2004, primarily concentrated in the integrated OEM on-board audio market-segment. As of 2013^[update] the ALC892 HD Audio codec and RTL8111 Gigabit Ethernet chip have become 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.

The increasing popularity of HD media players in 2009 led to the entry of Realtek into that market. The first series, the 1xx3 models sold at a lower price than similar quality chipsets of Realtek's competitors. (The main competitors were the Sigma Media Players.)

Realtek produced three major versions of Realtek 1xx3 and several minor variations. The three major 1xx3 chipset versions (1073, 1183, and 1283) all featured the same chip in terms of format support and performance, the only difference being the added ability to record AV sources in the 1283. HD Audio support in the 1xx3 improved through the chipset's life with several revisions. The DD and CC versions of the chipset both added full 7.1 HD-audio support to the chipset.