The lesson here (I think) is that the collective (and MASSIVE) R&D effort general purpose CPUs, and optimizing compilers (and now, GPUs) almost always trumps sp

The lesson here (I think) is that the collective (and MASSIVE) R&D effort general purpose CPUs, and optimizing compilers (and now, GPUs) almost always trumps specialized computing architectures. It's really hard to beat the raw performance of a modern Intel or AMD processor. I co-authored a paper in 1992 on this same issue with DSP chips, see: http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/CRL-92-10.pdf http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/CRL-92-10.pdf We predicted the shift of "signal processing" applications into the main CPU (e.g. the (in)famous winmodem). And we were widely criticized :) e.g., https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.dsp/FWJlNGMbN9Y https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.dsp/FWJlNGMbN9Y I also believe the market is good at pulling in functionality at the instruction-level when there's demand (e.g. encryption instructions, population count, etc.)