Design of an application specific instruction set processor for parametric speech synthesis

Parametric speech synthesizers utilize digital parameterized source-filter models for modeling the process of production of human speech. They are used in speech synthesis systems with an unlimited vocabulary. Presently, they are available as C language codes that run on PC platforms. They require a moderately high throughput of a mix of floating-point DSP functions and non-DSP (general-purpose) type computations. For embedded unlimited vocabulary speech synthesis systems, therefore, a need has been felt for the design of an Application Specific Integrated Processor for parametric speech synthesis. The present work describes the design of an Application Specific Instruction Set Processor (ASIP) for parametric speech synthesis that can serve the needs of embedded speech synthesis systems.