Text-to-speech (TTS) integrated circuits (ICs)

We do not have an active project in this area, but it is helpful to make others aware of useful new hardware components that let one build arbitrary-phrase text-to-speech (TTS) subsystems. As such become cheaper, they can be added to more devices, to enhance their usability by the vision-impaired.

As this is being written in November 2001, Winbond is announcing a chip (i.e. an integrated circuit) which it describes here, in part this way:

"Winbond Launches Industry's First Single-Chip Text-To-Speech Solution

"TTS chip solutions on the market today typically employ speech synthesis based on computer-generated models. The WTS701 creates a more natural human sounding speech by converting text to speech using recorded human speech samples...

"This means that TTS is now available without using microprocessors, PCs or computers. Completely programmable, the chip is capable of supporting any number of languages. Initially, U.S. English and Mandarin are available. The WTS701 is currently available for sampling and is priced at under $10.00 U.S. in volume quantities. Volume quantities are expected to be available in first quarter of 2002...

"The WTS701 accepts ASCII (Unicode for Mandarin language) input via a serial SPI port and converts this to spoken audio via an analog output or digital CODEC output..."

WECA Product Marketing
Contact Person: Hezi Saar
E-Mail: HSaar@winbond.com