Las Vegas, NV. Every year at COMDEX, BYTE Magazine distributes its “Best of Show” awards. These recognize new products and technologies that are innovative and will have a large impact on the industry. The awards are co-sponsored by SOFTBANK, the COMDEX hosting organization.
For this year’s round, with COMDEX wrapping up in Las Vegas today, the prestigious Best Technology award went to an audio processing technology. The Lexicus Division of Motorola, won the award for the Mandarin Chinese version of its speech recognition algorithms.
Lexicus edged out a couple of very high-profile runners-up: Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system (for handheld computers), and Digital Versatile Disc (Toshiba, Sony, Philips, Pioneer et.al.), the fast-rising star of mass multimedia storage for consumer applications.
The Lexicus software runs on several DSP platforms, including Motorola’s own 56000 DSP series and Motorola MemOS, ARM microprocessors, Windows ’95, and Microware. It delivers continuous voice dictation for people speaking Mandarin. Motorola positions the technology for applications such as car phones home portable phones and answering machines, low cost toys and video games.