Dirk & Intel Investors - Intel's Katmai has Major Speech Recognition Focus
Intel is apparently targeting speech recognition in a major way as a key vehicle to exploit the new Katmai Instructions (KNI).
This could eventually result in a compelling reason for business and home users to require KNI in new PC purchases as these software applications become viable and widely available.
Paul
{===============================}
infoworld.com
Intel Katmai chip will give voice to applications
By Ephraim Schwartz
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 7:01 AM PT, Oct 19, 1998
If Intel has its way, every application running on its next-generation processors would automatically be
speech-enabled this time next year.
Intel is including the speech technology in its next processor, code-named Katmai, due out in the first
quarter of 1999, and experts are predicting that by 2000 the technology will be able to go beyond
simple speech-to-text input.
"You will be able to say, 'What were sales for last September and how does that compare for this
September?'" said Steven Rondel, president of Conversational Computing, in Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft is also throwing its weight behind speech recognition, and will eventually replace the current
GUI with spoken commands. The software giant will put its Whistler text-to-speech engine, for
accessing data such as e-mail over voice telephone lines, in Windows NT 5.0 and its Whisper
speech-to-text engine in a future OS.
With OS and chip support in place, PCs will soon become personal assistants.
"Users will say, 'Print two copies of my financials, in landscape mode on the network printer,'" said Bob
Kutnick, chief technology officer at Lernout & Hauspie, in Burlington, Mass.
Major corporate users appear interested but cautious.
"It will take a better than 95 percent accuracy for a company like Mobil to use speech technology," said
Cliff Walters, a laboratory supervisor at Mobil Technology, in Dallas.
Walters sees the benefits of speech technology playing out in niche areas at Mobil, such as in help
desk situations when users are already on the phone and talking.
Intel started its project by creating a separate speech team, spun off from its original Katmai
development team, to deal solely with speech technology, sources said.
That group developed a new set of Katmai instructions that will work with the "hidden Markov model,"
algorithms commonly used by speech developers to improve speech-recognition accuracy and the
speed of recognitions.
The current speech algorithms are excellent, according to Raphael Wong, manager of worldwide
speech programs at Intel. But the stumbling block until now has been the inadequacy of the processors.
With the introduction of 450-MHz and 500-MHz processors in 1999, all of that will change.
The new Katmai instruction set from Intel will also improve the capability of voice and data to work over
phone lines without distortion, according to Bill Meisel, president of TMA Associates, a
speech-technology consultancy in Tarzana, Calif.
In 1999, voice-enabled applications used over phone lines will make major inroads into corporate
services, according to David Nahamoo, senior manager of human language technologies at IBM
Research, in Yorktown, N.Y. Users will have their e-mail, contact information, and datebook
appointments translated into voice and spoken to them over the phone.
"It will revolutionize how users in large corporations access information and services," Nahamoo said.
Enterprises will be able to remotely support customers around the clock.
Intel is not alone in pushing speech as the next user interface.
A speech consortium headed by IBM and Sun Microsystems will ship the first Java speech API by the
first quarter of 1999.
"We are designing this API to accommodate the whole enterprise implementation of applications over
different operating systems and different environments," Nahamoo said.
Java's strength as a client/server technology is enabling developers to create applets that work inside
browsers. IBM is currently developing a Java-based, speech-enabled Internet search engine.
Intel Corp., in Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at www.intel.com.
Ephraim Schwartz is an InfoWorld editor at large.
Go to the Week's Top News Stories
Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Deputy News Editor, Carolyn April
Copyright © 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net
{============================== |
