Hello everyone, I am Engineer Wang.

Today, let’s learn about a company, named: Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd. (“Rockchip”, stock code: 603893).

The reason for introducing this company is that their chips are widely used, and in the embedded field, there are very few hardware engineers who are unaware of them.

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Introduction

Our daily routine as hardware engineers involves either designing circuit boards or selecting chips.

In chip selection, we often mention chips such as: RK3568, RK3399, and RK3588, all of which come from one company—Rockchip.

The RK chips mainly adopt the ARM architecture, which is known for its low power consumption and high efficiency, making it suitable for battery-powered devices and embedded systems, widely used in consumer electronics, AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things), automotive electronics, and robotics.

Image Source | Hangxunda IoT Technology

Due to strong market demand, these chips have also driven many related industrial chains.

Some companies specialize in developing RK development boards and core boards, with their main customers being learners of development boards and companies that find self-development challenging. These companies can directly purchase finished products to quickly complete product formation and thus capture the market faster.

For us hardware engineers, selecting a chip is not just about looking at parameters; we also need to consider its usability and ecosystem support. Rockchip’s chips not only have powerful performance but also provide rich development tools and technical documentation, greatly lowering the development threshold. More importantly, they offer excellent cost-performance ratio, especially in the mid-to-high-end market, where Rockchip’s chips often achieve higher performance at lower costs.

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Company Overview

According to Tianyancha, the legal representative of Rockchip is: Li Min, and the company was established in 2001, which means it has been around for 24 years, headquartered in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.

Focusing on integrated circuit design and R&D, it has now developed into a leading IoT (Internet of Things) and AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) processor chip enterprise.

Image Source | Tianyancha

Although Rockchip performs very prominently in the market, its founder Li Min is quite low-key.

There is very little information available online about Li Min’s personal profile and past experiences, and related articles are hard to find, which may be related to the Fujian people’s style of being “low-key and pragmatic, quietly achieving great things”.

Li Min’s Personal ProfileBorn in Zhoushan, 1965, in Fuzhou, he entered the electronics industry in 1991. In 2001, Li Min co-founded Rockchip Electronics with his former colleague Huang Xu. The company went public on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2020, and its market value is now in the hundreds of billions.

Company Development History

In 1998, the tape recorder product began to gain popularity, and the market demand was strong. Li Min and Huang Xu saw this huge opportunity, so they established Rockchip Electronics in 2001, focusing on the design and development of tape recorder chips, becoming a leader in the tape recorder chip industry.

Image Source | JD.com

Subsequently, the company entered the MP3/MP4 main control chip market and achieved a good domestic market share.

Later, it began designing Android system tablet chips, achieving good results.

Now, in the AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) field, it focuses on image processing chips, high-performance AI chips, with products widely used in smart home, smart payment, authentication and identification, and has achieved significant success, becoming a leading domestic AIoT SoC chip supplier.

With the AI boom in 2025, Rockchip has also emerged, and its recent flagship product—the RK3588 series—aligns well with AI development, receiving high praise in the market for its low power consumption and high performance.

Image Source | RockchipOfficial Website

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Market Competitiveness

In our country, there are many companies similar to Rockchip that perform outstandingly in chip design.

• Allwinner Technology
• Allwinner Technology
• Huawei HiSilicon

• Unisoc

Compared to them, Rockchip’s competitive advantages mainly lie in the following aspects:

Image Source | RockchipOfficial Website

• Rockchip’s chips achieve a good balance between performance and price, especially in the mid-to-low-end market,cost-performance ratio far exceeds that of international giants.

• As a domestic enterprise, Rockchip has significant advantages in technical support, customer service, and market response speed.
• Rockchip’s product line covers a wide range from low-power IoT chips to high-performance AI chips, meeting the needs of different customers.

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Opportunities and Challenges

In recent years, the international market has become increasingly turbulent, especially with the US trade war and “neck-choking” incidents, making chip localization a trend, which is undoubtedly a great opportunity for domestic chips to rise.

However, it must be said that this path is not easy.

For us hardware engineers, we have clearly felt in our actual work that domestic chips still have a lot of room for improvement in the following aspects:

Hardware Development Manuals

1. Improve Development Documentation

Development documentation is the most complained point among us hardware engineers.

When using foreign chips, we can directly go to the manufacturer’s website to download detailed technical documents. For example, the documentation for a DC/DC chip might be dozens of pages long, and the CPU documentation could be hundreds of pages, with almost all parameters available, allowing us to find references when debugging. In Sichuan dialect, we would say it is “very comfortable“.

However, the development documentation for domestic chips is often inadequate; this is not only for processor chips but also for many other chips. Many documents are considered “core secrets” by suppliers and are not publicly available. When you need certain key parameters, the response is often, “This is internal information and not available to the public.” This secretive attitude is frustrating.

In contrast, foreign chip giants like TI not only provide complete documentation but also offer it for free, resulting in a completely different user experience. This is something domestic chip manufacturers need to learn and improve.

2. Improve Product Quality

Previously, in our technical group, some colleagues reported encountering some pitfalls during product development and design.

For example, the same model of LPDDR4, the RK3566 supports it, but the RK3568 does not; the OTG interface cannot open when connecting a USB camera; the MIPI camera does not support YUV format, etc. Although we eventually obtained patches through technical support to solve the problems, it would have been better if these issues did not exist during the design and development process.

3. Dependence on Foreign Process Technology and High-end IP Cores

On a deeper level, although Rockchip performs outstandingly in consumer electronics and AIoT fields, its process technology and high-end IP cores still rely on foreign technology, which is a common challenge faced by domestic chips.

Image Source | Zhihu

① Currently, Rockchip’s chips mainly use 8nm (RK3588), 28nm (RK3399) and other process technologies, while international leading manufacturers (such as TSMC, Samsung) have achieved mass production of advanced processes like 5nm, 3nm. In the high-end market (such as smartphones and servers), Rockchip’s chips find it difficult to compete with international giants.

To make up for this shortcoming, Rockchip has integrated a self-developed NPU (Neural Processing Unit) in the RK3588 chip to enhance AI computing capabilities and has optimized chip architecture and algorithms to minimize the gap with international advanced levels.

② Rockchip’s chip design relies on high-end IP cores provided by foreign manufacturers, such as ARM’s CPU and GPU cores. This dependency brings potential risks: if ARM and other manufacturers stop licensing, Rockchip’s chip design will be severely affected. To address this challenge, Rockchip maintains close cooperation with ARM to ensure the continuous supply of IP cores while actively exploring the possibility of independent research and development.

Conclusion

The rise of domestic chips is a long and arduous journey. Although we have achieved some results, there are still many shortcomings, and there is a long way to go in the future. We must remain grounded, continuously improve, and truly realize the dream of becoming a “chip powerhouse”.

References:

Rockchip Official Website

The Next Zhongji Xuchuang! Rockchip, AI Segment Leader, Absolutely Hot Commodity!

Rockchip, the leading enterprise in AloT SoC chip design, maintains a high growth momentum. Key points summarized.

Rockchip: The company has long-term good cooperation with TSMC, ARM, and foreign EDA software companies.

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