RIPAC (microprocessor)

RIPAC was a VLSI single-chip microprocessor designed for automatic recognition of the connected speech, one of the very first of this use.

The project of the microprocessor RIPAC started in 1984.[1] RIPAC was aimed to provide efficient real-time speech recognition services to the italian telephone system provided by SIP. The microprocessor was presented in September 1986 at Den Haag (Netherlands) at EUSPICO conference. It was composed of 70.000 transistors and structured as Harvard architecture.

The name RIPAC is the acronym for "Riconoscimento del PArlato Connesso", that means "Recognition of the connected speech" in Italian. The microprocessor was designed by the italian companies CSELT and ELSAG and was produced by SGS: a combination of Hidden Markov Model and Dynamic Time Warping algorithms was used for processing speech signals. It was able to do real-time speech recognition of Italian and many languages with a good affordability. The chip, issued by U.S. Patent No. 4,907,278, worked at first run.[2]

References
  1. Cantoni, Virginio, Gabriele Falciasecca, and Giuseppe Pelosi, eds. Storia delle telecomunicazioni. Vol. 1. Firenze University Press, 2011., p. 394.
  2. Licciardi, L., Paolini, M., Tasso, R., Torielli, A., & Cecinati, R. (1989, May). RIPAC: a VLSI processor for speech recognition. In Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 1989., Proceedings of the IEEE 1989 (pp. 20-6). IEEE.

Bibliography
  • R. Cecinati, A. Ciaramella, G. Venuti, & C. Vicenzi (1986). A dynamic time warping custom integrated circuit for speech recognition, In EUSIPCO 86 (pp. 1215-1218).
  • R. Cecinati, A. Ciaramella, G.Venuti, C. Vicenzi, A Custom Integrated Circuit with Dynamic Time Warping for Speech Recognition, CSELT Technical Reports, Vol. 15, N.1.
  • R. Cecinati, A. Ciaramella, L. Licciardi, M. Paolini, R. Tasso, & G. Venuti (1990). U.S. Patent No. 4,907,278. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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