Fact · Speech recognition
200times faster than real time
Smallest AI reports that Pulse Pro transcribes a single two-hour audio file at about 200 times real time on one NVIDIA L40S GPU when word timestamps are on, in about 36 seconds.
Quote found word for word on the live source, last checked October 19, 2026
In the source's own words
“Long-form audio on L40S (single 2 hr file) Mode Throughput (RTFx) 2 hr file latency No word timestamps 250–300× ~24–29 sec With word timestamps ~200× ~36 sec”
Parallelism and Latency (Smallest AI self-hosted Pulse STT), Smallest AI, n.d., Parallelism and Latency, Pulse Pro, Long-form audio on L40S.
Open the original- What it measures
- The page states that the figures come from internal benchmarks on a single GPU host, measured on an L40S (48 GB) for reference. The page says word alignment costs roughly one-third of throughput on Pulse Pro.
- What it does not show
- A vendor's internal benchmark, single file, English not stated, steady-state on one GPU. The source writes the figure as an approximation (about 200 times). The page warns that throughput depends on hardware revision, driver and audio.
In the data
A row of Speech Recognition Speed: Real-Time Factor Data, as Smallest AI, 2 hr file, timestamps: 200 times faster than real time.
- System
- Smallest AI Pulse Pro (self-hosted)
- Kind
- Cloud service
- Hardware
- NVIDIA L40S GPU (48 GB)
- Test set
- Single 2-hour file, with word timestamps