General purpose digital computation is often power limited (either from the supply energy or thermals of the device) and there is an (academic) resurgence of an

General purpose digital computation is often power limited (either from the supply energy or thermals of the device) and there is an (academic) resurgence of analog computation on data prior to digital blocks to reduce the power footprint of a part. Most applications of this are RF. Conditioning signals as you say these days and in the future isn't just bandwidth limiting and shifting the baseband.