whisper.cpp is a high-performance, open-source C/C++ port of OpenAI's Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) model. Designed for efficiency, it boasts a plain C/C++ implementation with minimal dependencies, making it highly portable. The tool is optimized for various architectures, including Apple Silicon (with ARM NEON, Accelerate framework, Metal, and Core ML support), x86 (AVX intrinsics), and POWER (VSX intrinsics). It supports mixed F16/F32 precision, integer quantization, and zero memory allocations at runtime. Efficient GPU support is available for NVIDIA, Vulkan, OpenVINO, Ascend NPU, and Moore Threads GPUs. It also includes Voice Activity Detection (VAD) and a C-style API, allowing for easy integration into different applications and platforms like Mac OS, iOS, Android, Java, Linux, WebAssembly, Windows, and Raspberry Pi.
Best used for
Ideal for developers and engineers who need to implement robust, high-performance automatic speech recognition in their applications, process audio offline on various devices, and leverage GPU acceleration for faster transcription. Especially valuable for building custom voice assistants or integrating ASR into embedded systems.