Alchemy to put Philips speech recognition on MPU

Alchemy Semiconductor is to port Philips' VoCon, an advanced continuous-speech recogniser for embedded systems, to its family of microprocessors.

Alchemy Semiconductor is to port Philips' VoCon, an advanced continuous-speech recogniser for embedded systems, to its family of microprocessors.

Philips' speech recognition software supports the full line of MIPS 32bit processor platforms.

This integration will allow OEMs to integrate voice capabilities into products being developed with Alchemy's family of processors.

Alchemy's current family of products includes the 400MHz, 0.5W Au1000 and the PCI-enabled Au1500 that are compatible with the MIPS32 ISA.

The initial port will target Microsoft Windows CE environment with other operating systems to follow.

The VoCon software package is a noise-robust, fast, and highly accurate continuous-speech recognition solution specifically designed for embedded devices such as the ones targeted by Alchemy in the Internet device market.

VoCon enables a variety of voice-controlled applications, including command and control, name and continuous-digit dialling, natural number dialling, address book management and menu navigation.

Features include speaker-independent and/or speaker-dependent recognition in isolated or continuous speech.

In addition, VoCon offers advanced features such as whole-word or phoneme-based recognition, word spotting, and enhanced noise and acoustic signal cancellation.

VoCon is available in several languages including US and UK English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian.

Alchemy CEO, Jim Moore, stated that the support of the Alchemy family of MIPS processors was a critical advancement in bringing sought-after speech recognition to a growing market.

"Of the numerous technology features available, the one lacking has been a robust speech interface", said Moore.

"Making Philips speech processing available to the highly desirable 32bit MIPS-based processor platforms, and specifically the highly integrated Alchemy family of products, means our customers can design in speech recognition even faster for that critical time-to-market advantage".

"It is essential that our speech solutions support a broad selection of microprocessors," said Fadi Kaake, Director of Voice Control for Philips Speech Processing in the USA.

"Adding the popular MIPS32 architecture to our portfolio of supported platforms increases our opportunities for agreements such as the one with Alchemy Semiconductor.

Alchemy's Au1000 very high performance microprocessor enables our whole new class of speech recognition that will enhance functionality and expedite time-to-market".

Availability will begin in Q4 2001 and the VoCon speech recogniser will be licensed directly from Philips Speech Processing.

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