>> I'd be surprised if there aren't already off-the-shelf parts you can 
>> buy for MPEG4 decoding. Surely there are for MPEG1...
> 
> Generally, what you buy is an off-the-shelf core, not an off-the-shelf 
> chip. ARM doesn't sell chips as much as they sell cores. Cores are the 
> new ICs.

Yeah, I'd heard about that. I guess if space is tight you need to put 
everything into a single ASIC. But otherwise, I'm not sure what the 
advantage is to integrating (say) an MPEG1 decoder into your chip is 
verses just mounting two chips on the board. Any cost saving in having 
to only mount one chip is surely dwarfed by the vast cost of making an ASIC.

>> Sure. But how often do you need to design new test equipment?
> 
> Every time you have a new type of product to test.

And here I was thinking that once you have a PSU tester, you can test 
any kind of PSU with it...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
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