[nylug-talk] Sound Analysis and CPU power

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Mon, 2 Apr 2007, Ruben Safir wrote:

>  Meanwhile, this genetleman was saying that the sound analysis programming
>  he uses runs into problems with realtime usage.  At first I thought this
>  was another case of just bad software design.  But as it was explained
>  it might be very well the case that the analysis of sound can be a tough
>  nut to crack even for a modern dual core intel chip.  Why is it that
>  we still don't have fundementally sound software for voice recognition and
>  dictation will all this power under the hood?  Is it that we reach hardware
>  threasholds, or is it just poor software design and not enough qualified
>  engineers interested in the problem?
DSPs are hard. Let's go shopping.

Yes, current processors are pretty darn fast - what could only be done on
DSP 5 years ago can be done on a commodity processor today. However,
current DSPs are even faster than 5 year old ones. So, for example, sure, 
you can do (random example, numbers pulled out of my butt) 20 channels 
of echo cancellation on a P4 that cost 200$, but on a 200$ DSP you can now 
do 500 channels of echo cancellation.

Right tool for the right job.

-alex