Try and adopt MIWOK by Dolphin Integration, a benchmark for Voice Activity Detectors

Grenoble, France – February 29, 2016 -- Intuitive and simple user interface drives the growing demand for voice control, either complementing or replacing keyboards, touchscreens and other traditional controls.

The multiplicity of solutions available for Voice Activity Detection combined with absence of vendor-independent benchmark makes it hard for any purchaser to select the best solution. Today, neither unified performances nor benchmark exist to define the quality of a Voice Activity Detector, leaving OEM and Fabless companies using an audio DSP in a tricky situation.

Dolphin Integration fills this benchmarking gap by making publicly available MIWOK™, a vendor-independent benchmark based on objective criteria to assess the performance of any VAD solutions.

For those who are not satisfied by the subjectivity of a mere demonstration, the MIWOK™ benchmark provides to companies embedding, using or developing a VAD to statistically assess and specify the key performances.

What is MIWOK™?

MIWOK™ is an open benchmark, under the Creative Commons ShareAlike license, containing a set of words (representative of language characteristics) and noises (representative of multiple near-field and far-field environments).

Download MIWOK™ here

What can be measured with MIWOK™?

With MIWOK™ benchmark, the following performances may be measured:

• Detection Latency (DL): it must be short
• Noise detected as Voice (NDV): it must be low
• Voice detected as Voice (VDV): it must be high

On which type of VAD implementation can MIWOK™ be applied?

MIWOK™ is applicable to any VAD implementations:

• Hardware implementation with high-level language models described in Matlab, Verilog, Verilog-A,…
• Software code (C/C++…) for DSP or Application Processor
• Final product with an analog, I2S or PDM interface and featuring an access to the wake-up interrupt signal

How does MIWOK guarantee the representativeness of the complexity of a language?

MIWOK™ benchmark encompasses, for a given language, a set of words that are representative of the first phonemes used. These words have been registered from both mans and women to ensure a realistic spectrum repartition on the audio bandwidth.

MIWOK™ is available in diverse languages (Chinese and English) and both for Near-Field or Far-Field situations.

This allows Dolphin Integration to launch its innovative voice activity detector - WhisperTrigger™ - with factual demonstration of its superior performances in VAD. The WhisperTrigger™ is proposed as a hard block for integration on silicon in either a digital microphone, an application processor or a DSP to wake-up the system without voice data loss.

Such uLP trigger IPs are proposed in numerous processes from 180 nm down to 16 nm, They are ideally suited for triggering key word spotting or voice recognition algorithms thanks to their low detection latency enabling a fast awakening of the voice subsystem.

For further information on MIWOK™ benchmark and WhisperTrigger™, please visit us, or contact us at converters@dolphin-ip.com.

About Dolphin Integration

Dolphin Integration contributes to "enabling low-power Systems-on-Chip" for worldwide customers - up to the major actors of the semiconductor industry - with high-density Silicon IP components best at low-power consumption.

The "Foundation IP" of this offering involves innovative libraries of standard cells, register files and memory generators. The "Fabric IP" of voltage regulators, Power Island Construction Kits and their control network MAESTRO enable a flexible assembly with their loads. They especially star the "Feature IP": from high-resolution converters for audio and measurement applications to power-optimized 8 or 16 and 32 bit micro-controllers.

Over 30 years of experience in the integration of silicon IP components, providing services for ASIC/SoC design and fabrication with its own EDA solutions, make Dolphin Integration a genuine one-stop shop addressing all customers' needs for specific requests.

It is not just one more supplier of Technology, but the provider of the DOLPHIN INTEGRATION know-how!

The company strives to incessantly innovate for its customers’ success, which has led to two strong differentiators:

• state-of-the-art “panoplies of Semiconductor IP components” for high-performance applications securing the most competitive SoC architectural solutions,
• a team of Integration and Application Engineers supporting each user’s need for optimal application schematics, demonstrated through EDA solutions enabling early performance assessments.

Its social responsibility has been from the start focused on the design of integrated circuits with low-power consumption, placing the company in the best position to now contribute to new applications for general power savings through the emergence of the Internet of Things.