Fonix, developer of natural interface technology, has announced that it will port its applications to XScale processors and take advantage of Intel’s MMX extensions.

Users will be able to control mobile devices such as smartphones and PDAs with nautral speech input. By optimising its technology for XScale, Fonix will be able to reduce the power requirements and introduce the system into smaller form-factor devices. Fonix also sells what it claims is the world’s smallest footprint voice synthesier, enabling devices to respond in a realistic human voice.

“The new Wireless MMX instructions for Intel XScale processors provide enhanced capabilities to Fonix speech interface solutions,” said Lynn Shepherd, Vice President of Product Development for Fonix’s Mobile and Wireless products. “Intel’s Wireless MMX instructions will benefit users by allowing much larger vocabularies to be used for speech recognition providing a more natural speech interface, so that users can speak to their wireless and mobile devices using natural phrases and sentences.”

Insight

Speech input in the mobile environment has never made it beyond the occasional voice dialling application. A question mark remains over whether it will ever be suitable for truly mobile user scenarios. Setting aside the limits of current technology, it is unclear whether users will be comfortable with the idea of talking to their mobile devices for cultural and, potentially, privacy reasons.

The technology is advancing rapidly, as discussed by Richard Bloor in his recent feature, with faster processors, more memory and new analysis techniques. This is the sort of processor-intensive application which Intel is hoping will drive adoption of its platforms by the mobile industry, highlighted in yeterday’s PMN article, Intel announces wireless initiatives.