A chip capable of cutting voice control power consumption by up to 99% is being developed

A research team of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has reduced the power consumption by 90 to 99% compared with existing technology and is equipped with a "speech recognition function" equipped chip that enables the terminal to move for several months without charging or replacing the battery We are developing.

Voice control everywhere | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2017/low-power-chip-speech-recognition-electronics-0213


The speech recognition chip developed by the research team of Professor Anantha Chandrakasan of MIT etc. focuses on discriminating the contents of human speech and ambient noise with a circuit having "voice activity detection" function It features. Terminals equipped with this chip can greatly reduce power consumption by keeping the system in the power saving mode normally and switching the mode when recognizing human voice.

Where speech recognition software used in current smartphones and others requires about 1 W of power, while the chip under development is dependent on the number of words to be recognized, if it operates with a power of about 0.2 to 10 milliwatts Thing. If this chip is actually used, it is expected to be able to suppress the power 90 to 99% compared with existing voice recognition terminals, and it seems to be an element to accelerate the development of IoT devices.

According to Michael Price, a graduate student who participated in the project, "This technology is not developed for a specific application.We do not use software and hardware but a system using existing technology We are trying to create a foundation for providing good trade-offs for designers. "

"Voice input will be a natural interface for applications of many wearable terminals and intelligent devices.If the device is downsized, interfaces other than touch input and keyboard input are required, and in order to suppress energy consumption It will be important to implement the function locally rather than the cloud, "Professor Chandrakasan said.