The physical limitations of uniprocessors and the real-time requirements of numerous practical applications have made parallel processing an essential technology in military, industry and scientific research. In this dissertation, we investigate parallelizations of three practical applications using three parallel machine models. The algorithms are: Finitely inductive (FI) sequence processing is a pattern recognition technique used in many fields. We first propose four parallel FI algorithms on the EREW PRAM. The time complexity of the parallel factoring and following by bucket packing is O(sk^2 n/p), and they are optimal under some conditions. The parallel factoring and following by hashing requires O(sk^2 n/p) time when uniform hash functions are used and log(p) ≤ k n/p and pm ≈ n. Their speedup is proportional to the number processors used. For these results, s is the number of levels, k is the size of the antecedents and n is the length of the input sequence and p is the number of processors. We also describe algorithms for raster/vector conversion based on the scan model to handle block-like connected components of arbitrary geometrical shapes with multi-level nested dough nuts for the IES (image exploitation system). Both the parallel raster-to-vector algorithm and parallel vector-to-raster algorithm require …

Speech sounds generated by a simple waveform synthesizer were used to create a vector quantization codebook for use in speech recognition. Recognition was tested over the TI-20 isolated word data base using a conventional DTW matching algorithm. Input speech was band limited to 300 - 3300 Hz, then passed through the Scott Instruments Corp. Coretechs process, implemented on a VET3 speech terminal, to create the speech representation for matching. Synthesized sounds were processed in software by a VET3 signal processing emulation program. Emulation and recognition were performed on a DEC VAX 11/750. The experiments were organized in 2 series. A preliminary experiment, using no vector quantization, provided a baseline for comparison. The original codebook contained 109 vectors, all derived from 2 formant synthesized sounds. This codebook was decimated through the course of the first series of experiments, based on the number of times each vector was used in quantizing the training data for the previous experiment, in order to determine the smallest subset of vectors suitable for coding the speech data base. The second series of experiments altered several test conditions in order to evaluate the applicability of the minimal synthesized codebook to conventional codebook training. The baseline recognition rate …