On Thursday, September 3, 2015 at 3:13:26 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thu, 03 Sep 2015 09:32:59 -0700, Don Y
wrote:


Everything is a CPU these days. It is cheaper to write software and
use an off the shelf CPU chip than to design a purpose built chip.

That depends on the functionality you intend in the product. Note
that CPUs go out of production just like "dedicated chips"...


You can still buy 8080 chips but these people are using a standard PIC
of some sort.


Who are "these people" and who says what they are using? Here
is a link to several HDMI chips that do the HDMI to analog display function
from just one chip manufacturer. Google and you'll find plenty more. Also,
not sure what a "PIC" is. If you used a general purpose CPU, it's only
part of the solution. You'd still need a separate D/A, for example.
And trying to have one CPU do many things instead of a dedicated chip
brings it's own problems, how many times have you had a video freeze on
a PC for example?