New silicon audition papers online ...

[John Lazzaro <lazzaro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Two new papers on silicon audition available online ...

                                                        --john lazzaro

                        (presented at NIPS*96)

                     A Micropower Analog VLSI HMM
                    State Decoder for Wordspotting

                    John Lazzaro and John Wawrzynek
                        CS Division, UC Berkeley

                            Richard Lippmann
                         MIT Lincoln Laboratory


                                Abstract

We describe the implementation of a hidden Markov model state decoding
system, a component for a wordspotting speech recognition system.  The
key specification for this state decoder design is microwatt power
dissipation; this requirement led to a continuous-time, analog circuit
implementation. We describe the tradeoffs inherent in the choice of an
analog design and explain the mapping of the discrete-time state
decoding algorithm into the continuous domain. We characterize the
operation of a 10-word (81 state) state decoder test chip.

Available on the Web at:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/biblio/decoder.ps.gz




                    (upcoming UCB Technical Report)

                  Anawake: Signal-Based Power Management
                  For Digital Signal Processing Systems


                    John Lazzaro and John Wawrzynek
                        CS Division, UC Berkeley

                            Richard Lippmann
                         MIT Lincoln Laboratory


                                Abstract

Single-chip, low-power, programmable digital signal processing systems
are capable of hosting complete speech processing applications, while
consuming a few milliwatts of average power. We present a power
management architecture that decreases the average power consumption
of these systems to 3--10 microwatts, in applications where speech
signals are present with a sufficiently low duty cycle. In this
architecture, a micropower analog signal processing system, Anawake,
continuously analyzes the incoming signal, and controls the power
consumption of the DSP system in a signal-dependent way. We estimate
system power consumption for Anawake designs optimized for different
peak-speech-signal to average-background-noise ratios.

Available on the Web at:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/biblio/anawake.ps.gz