4. The ASIC of claim 1 wherein for each completed word, the language model engine is adapted to identify one or more expected words that are likely to follow the completed word using an n-gram analysis, wherein as part of the n-gram analysis the language model engine performs a lookup for trigrams for the completed word in the external memory using a hashing technique.
6. The ASIC of claim 4 wherein trigrams in a language model used for speech recognition are stored in a plurality of hash tables in the external memory, each of the plurality of hash tables including a plurality of bins per hash value, and lookup for the trigrams for the completed word comprises: for each hash table of the plurality of hash tables, computing a hash value for the hash table based on the completed word and a preceding word in a word history of the completed word using a corresponding hash function; and finding the trigrams for the completed word in the plurality of hash tables using the hash values computed for the plurality of hash tables.