SYSTEM AND METHOD OF PATTERN RECOGNITION EMPLOYING A MULTIPROCESSING APPARATUS PIPELINED APPARATUS WITH PRIVATE PATTERN MEMORY

A computer implemented apparatus and method of pattern recognition utilizing a pattern recognition engine coupled with a general purpose computer system. The present invention system provides increased accuracy and performance in handwriting and voice recognition systems and may interface with general purpose computer systems. A pattern recognition engine is provided within the present invention that contains five pipelines which operate in parallel and are specially optimized for Dynamic Time Warping and Hidden Markov Models procedures for pattern recognition, especially handwriting recognition. These pipelines comprise two arithmetic pipelines, one control pipeline and two pointer pipelines. Further, a private memory is associated with each pattern recognition engine for library storage of reference or prototype patterns. Recognition procedures are partitioned across a CPU and the pattern recognition engine. Use of a private memory allows quick access of the library patterns without impeding the performance of programs operating on the main CPU or the host bus. Communication between the CPU and the pattern recognition engine is accomplished over the host bus.