The evolution of DSP-bios.
Perhaps we may know some day.
IMO.. In managing the attributes of numerous codecs utilizing economical serial memory structure, while eliminating the need of added matching translation hardware for each codec, ....they're going to infringe in some manner.
For e.Digital..it's diversity through economy components and hard wiring them in.
For others... e.g TI, Actel...etc, it can be, by placing a serialized memory structure directly within the cells of a processor substrate and then manage accordingly.
doni