A modularized processor LSI with a highly parallel structure for continuous speech recognition

A speech recognition processor CMOS LSI was developed as the processing element (PE) of a ring array processor previously proposed by the authors as architecture to carry out highly parallel recognition processing with array size flexibility. There are three key features for the LSI: (1) a highly parallel I/O structure of triple buffer with cyclical-mode transition control methods to solve the serious problem of inter-PE data transfer overhead versus the array processing; (2) a control structure with two direct memory access (DMA) controllers to realize inter-PE data I/O processing and intra-PE processing in parallel; and (3) a pipelined recognition processing at a high execution rate realized by a pipelined structure and a balanced clock distribution design technique. These effective designs for the PE LSI allow high-speed recognition processing without any inter-PE data transfer overhead in the ring array processor. Combining the PE-LSI architecture with the proposed array architecture for highly parallel dynamic time warping (DTW) processing, a real-time continuous speech recognition system based on continuous dynamic programming matching using the SPLIT method for a 1000-word vocabulary, can be constructed using a ring array processor consisting of 30 PEs