Digic 4 improvements, processor -vs- software?

I was thinking about this the other night. With each new wave of canon DSLRs we get a new digic that goes with it and new features/better performance because of it... BUT, how much of the improvements are because of the hardware, and how much because of the software?

I ask because I wonder how much could be done with a firmware upgrade -vs- needed the new hardware. Think of it this way, CS4 runs on my old computer no problem but adds content aware scaling etc. The newer noise ninjas run on my old computer but reduce the noise even better in old files... All just software. Sure they run a bit slower than they would if you also upgraded the computer, but I think you get my point.

So which features could canon (or someone else) upgrade on existing bodies just via firmware? I'm thinking more along the lines of a market for someone to make firmware updates for camera that are already out similar to how people "chip" their cars. Obviously this would void any warranty you have left with canon, but there could be a market here...

Liveview (this could need hardware, at least to AF)?
Video Mode (proven to work with liveview bodies granted w/o sound)?
better noise performance?
menus?
ALO, HTP, Vignette, etc

what got me thinking is the 5D to 5Dii upgrade. About half the new bells and whistles could probably be added to the 5D via firmware (menus, noise/ISOs etc). Who wouldn't pay to have a 5D with "only" 12mp and the digic 4 noise performance behind it...

Could be a functional limitation of the microcontroller. does anyone know which ones canon uses?

Without knowing what exactly is in the firmware or some reverse engineering there is no easy way of answering a question like this. A perfect example of firmware vs. hardware is the wireless router hacking people do with ddwrt. (or canon firmware hacks if you want to go that route).

nadtz wrote in post #7261877
Without knowing what exactly is in the firmware or some reverse engineering there is no easy way of answering a question like this. A perfect example of firmware vs. hardware is the wireless router hacking people do with ddwrt. (or canon firmware hacks if you want to go that route).

That's true. Take something that seems simple like noise performance. Because we know the sensor of the 5D2 is vastly different from that of the 5D1, the difference in noise performance is obviously much more than the firmware of the DIGIC processor.

What, perhaps except for the appearance of the menus, isn't a blend of hardware and firmware even beyond mere speed of processing?

Plus you have to remember that processors in consumer electronics devices are (mostly) designed to do only what they need to do. They do this for efficiency, power savings, cost savings, engineering savings, etc. It's not a multi-function CPU that can do anything & everything. They are very specialized.

So even though my CPU and memory in my PC is good enough to play blu-rays, the specialized chip in a stand-alone blu-ray player is designed to only play blu-rays, and does it better in a much smaller & power-efficient package.

It's really not cost effective (and engineering efficient) to put a big, general-use processor in a DSLR.

If they want/need it to do more, they design (not completely, but tweak/upgrade the old ones usually utilizing more advance manufacturing abilities) a new chip.

So basically, I don't think it's physically capable of doing more with software/firmware upgrades because the chips are so specialized...