Abstract: Speech recognition is performed in several successive phases, with each word being separated into elements of equal length. Each element is represented by a vector consisting of eight coefficients. After the end of a word is recognized, the word is successively compared with all reference words in a speech recognition apparatus. The recognition process is speeded up through the utilization of common hardware for all phases and by avoidance of idle time. A cellular array processor is used whose processing elements operated predominantly as filters in the feature extraction phase, and each element compares two vectors in the comparison phase. By gradual transitions between ends and beginnings of words, the capacities of all processors are equally utilized. The exchange of data is practically limited to an exchange between adjacent processors and is thus very efficient.