The thing is, selling things is not just about having a good technology.
It should work as well, generate little tech-support etc. It's not simple
at all putting stuff in the main cpu - you need to cooperate with whatever
operating system is on it, and be totally sure your code gets enough cpu
time etc. You'll be much more dependant on the OS internals, OS
performance etc than before when you just gave MS (and Linux maybe..) a
small driver.
In the end, the total cost of a product can very well be lowered by using
more expensive hardware, but which you can guarantee will work, and the
end-user doesn't care if his main CPU is idle 99.9% of the time while he
uses his 3d board or modem. He just sees the end cost.
I'm not saying that I would put a word processor embedded on a PCI board.
But if, say, operating systems were so bad they couldn't run a word
processor reliable, then somebody would probably make one!
-Bjorn
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