Dolphin Integration innovates for detection practices on voice activity with WhisperTrigger

Grenoble, France – March 09, 2015 -- While voice activity detection is considered as a must-have for a growing range of applications such as wearable devices or smart home appliances, Dolphin Integration innovates with the stand-alone WhisperTrigger™. Whereas the voice detection function is usually handled by a DSP or a voice processor, it now becomes possible to leave the rest of the SoC in stand-by or sleep mode while leaving only the WhisperTrigger™ in always-on mode. Indeed, it enables to wake-up the system without voice data loss.

Depending on the choice of microphone either Digital or Analog, two triggers are available WhisperTrigger D and A.

The WhisperTriggers, designed as hard Silicon IP, are ideally suited for triggering voice recognition algorithms thanks to their low detection latency enabling faster wake-up of the voice Processor.

Performance highlights of WhisperTrigger-D for a digital MEMS microphone:

• Saving up to 30 % of DSP activity due to an efficient detection algorithm, avoiding numerous false detections compared to power-based algorithms
• Ultra-low power consumption: only 15 μW added to codec stand-by mode consumption for Voice Detection
• Detection Latency (DL): down to 8 ms depending on the type of phoneme
• Noise Detected as Speech Rate (NDSR): 8 % at 10 dB of Power Ratio (PwR) threshold level.

WhisperTrigger™ is embedded in several products in our portfolio:

• sCODa96-H1-LB-IO-VD.01 (28 nm)
• sCODS100-LB-IO-N.12 (40 nm)
• sCODp-MT1-VD.02 (130 nm)

For further information, please contact - converters@dolphin-ip.com.

About Dolphin Integration

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

This wide offering is based on innovative libraries of standard cells, register files, memory generators and power regulators. Complete networks for power supply can be flexibly assembled together with their loads: from high-resolution converters for audio and measurement applications to power-optimized micro-controllers of 8 or 16 and 32 bits.

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

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

• state-of-the-art “configured subsystems” 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.