Speech recognition is a computationally demanding task, especially the decoding part, which converts pre-processed speech data into words or sub-word units, and which incorporates Viterbi decoding and Gaussian distribution calculations. In this thesis, this part of the recognition process is implemented in programmable logic, specifically, on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Relevant background material about speech recognition is presented, along with a critical review of previous hardware implementations. Designs for a decoder suitable for implementation in hardware are then described. These include details of how multiple speech files can be processed in parallel, and an original implementation of an algorithm for summing Gaussian mixture components in the log domain. These designs are then implemented on an FPGA. An assessment is made as to how appropriate it is to use hardware for speech recognition. It is concluded that while certain parts of the recognition algorithm are not well suited to this medium, much of it is, and so an efficient implementation is possible. Also presented is an original analysis of the requirements of speech recognition for hardware and software, which relates the parameters that dictate the complexity of the system to processing speed and bandwidth. The FPGA implementations are compared to equivalent software, written for that purpose. For a contemporary FPGA and processor, the FPGA outperforms the software by an order of magnitude.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2002, held in Montpellier, France, in September 2002. The 104 revised regular papers and 27 poster papers presented together with three invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 214 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on rapid prototyping, FPGA synthesis, custom computing engines, DSP applications, reconfigurable fabrics, dynamic reconfiguration, routing and placement, power estimation, synthesis issues, communication applications, new technologies, reconfigurable architectures, multimedia applications, FPGA-based arithmetic, reconfigurable processors, testing and fault-tolerance, crypto applications, multitasking, compilation techniques, etc.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Application, FPL 2001, held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, in August 2001. The 56 revised full papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 117 submissions. The book offers topical sections on architectural framework, place and route, architecture, DSP, synthesis, encryption, runtime reconfiguration, graphics and vision, networking, processor interaction, applications, methodology, loops and systolic, image processing, faults, and arithmetic.

This book is the proceedings volume of the 10th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and its Applications (FPL), held August 27 30, 2000 in Villach, Austria, which covered areas like reconfigurable logic (RL), reconfigurable computing (RC), and its applications, and all other aspects. Its subtitle "The Roadmap to Reconfigurable Computing" reminds us, that we are currently witnessing the runaway of a breakthrough. The annual FPL series is the eldest international conference in the world covering configware and all its aspects. It was founded 1991 at Oxford University (UK) and is 2 years older than its two most important competitors usually taking place at Monterey and Napa. FPL has been held at Oxford, Vienna, Prague, Darmstadt, London, Tallinn, and Glasgow (also see: http://www. fpl. uni kl. de/FPL/). The New Case for Reconfigurable Platforms: Converging Media. Indicated by palmtops, smart mobile phones, many other portables, and consumer electronics, media such as voice, sound, video, TV, wireless, cable, telephone, and Internet continue to converge. This creates new opportunities and even necessities for reconfigurable platform usage. The new converged media require high volume, flexible, multi purpose, multi standard, low power products adaptable to support evolving standards, emerging new standards, field upgrades, bug fixes, and, to meet the needs of a growing number of different kinds of services offered to zillions of individual subscribers preferring different media mixes.

Chapters in the first part of the book cover all the essential speech processing techniques for building robust, automatic speech recognition systems: the representation for speech signals and the methods for speech-features extraction, acoustic and language modeling, efficient algorithms for searching the hypothesis space, and multimodal approaches to speech recognition. The last part of the book is devoted to other speech processing applications that can use the information from automatic speech recognition for speaker identification and tracking, for prosody modeling in emotion-detection systems and in other speech processing applications that are able to operate in real-world environments, like mobile communication services and smart homes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2003, held in Lisbon, Portugal in September 2003. The 90 revised full papers and 56 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 216 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on technologies and trends, communications applications, high level design tools, reconfigurable architecture, cryptographic applications, multi-context FPGAs, low-power issues, run-time reconfiguration, compilation tools, asynchronous techniques, bio-related applications, codesign, reconfigurable fabrics, image processing applications, SAT techniques, application-specific architectures, DSP applications, dynamic reconfiguration, SoC architectures, emulation, cache design, arithmetic, bio-inspired design, SoC design, cellular applications, fault analysis, and network applications.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on New Systems and Architecture for Automatic Speech Recognition and Synthesis, held at Bonas, Gers, France, 2-14 July 1984