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Oh come on now, get over it

I said ARM processor board. HUGE difference.....

There's not a huge difference between the ARM processor and the processor board. The Freescale i.MX ARM processor that is used in the microRendu has pretty much everything on-chip but it needs a board to sit on. The processor is often referred to as a System on a Chip (SoC). At the tiny board level it is referred to as a System on a Module (SoM).

"The Freescale i.MX ARM application processors are SoCs (System-on-Chip), that integrate many processing units into one die, like the main CPU, a video processing unit and a graphics processing unit for instance. The i.MX products are qualified for automotive, industrial and consumer markets.

Many devices use Freescale i.MX ARM processors, such as Ford Sync, Kobo_eReader, Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, SolidRun SOM's (including CuBox), some Logitech Harmony remote controls and Squeezebox radio, some Toshiba Gigabeat mp4 players.

Sounds pretty general purpose to me until they're turned into dedicated products.

By their very nature microprocessors are "general purpose" and can be used as such or turned into products with a single purpose, like the examples above. But they all begin life as general purpose computers.

Creating these streamers with hardwired discrete logic, ASICs, or FPGAs would be incredibly difficult and cost prohibitive depending on volumes. And even these now incorporate microprocessors and memory onboard.

Why would a low-volume audio manufacturer reinvent the wheel when there are several 'general purpose' computers out there that run existing popular operating systems for existing popular audio applications?

It's a fricking computer! ;-)

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