Nuance Communications (News - Alert) recently partnered with Spansion to improve speech-recognition technology for car makers.

The enhanced solution is based on the software and semiconductors offered by both the companies, according to Noel Randewich from reuters.com.

Spansion provides the Flash memory technology at the heart of the world's electronics systems, and powers a wide range of products including the routers that run the internet to the highly interactive and immersive consumer and automotive electronics.

The company claims its NOR chips are more tolerant of changes in temperature and are ideally suited for embedded applications.

Nuance Communications provides voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. 

Randewich notes that Spansion (News - Alert) has tweaked its NOR flash memory chips to make Nuance's software respond faster to spoken commands and also store larger lexicons.

"We take our basic technology, we package it differently, we add microcontroller technology and we add algorithms to it so we can interface quickly with all the Nuance software," according to Spansion chief executive John Kispert.

The package is ready to be shopped to manufacturers and Kispert told Reuters (News - Alert) that the sales of chips through the partnership with Nuance is expected to be between $10 million and $100 million by early 2013.

Both Nuance and Spansion already share a business relationship and Nuance's technology powers the Siri voice recognition feature in Apple (News - Alert) Inc's iPhone 4S.

“Voice technology must be thoughtfully integrated as part of the in-car system in totality – it can't be an afterthought,” said Arnd Weil, vice president and general manager, Nuance Automotive. “With our voice technologies integrated as part of the Spansion chips, Nuance and Spansion are able to further drive a synergy between hardware and software solutions that will enable auto manufacturers to take full advantage of the speed and power needed for today's embedded automotive systems.”

Spansion was in news last month when NVIDIA (News - Alert), the global leader in visual computing, selected Spansion GL Flash memory with its Tegra processors for automotive infotainment, digital instrument clusters and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).