On July 31, 2014, MSI presented a technical paper at the 57th annual fuze conference, held in Newark, New Jersey. The paper was titled Advantages of Analog Signal Processing over FPGA and DSP in Fuzing. This paper features the MSMXVHF High Frequency Mixer and Selectable Very High Frequency Lowpass/Bandpass Filter, the MSU2F1 Dual Resistor Programmable Universal Active Filter and the MSSPSI Smart Programmable Sensor Interface, all standard product ICs from MSI. Here is the technical abstract from that paper:
Although Field Programmable Gate Arrays and Digital Signal Processors are evolving into powerful system building blocks, Mixed Signal Analog Signal Processing remains superior. This paper will present the reasons for the superior nature of Analog Signal Processing. This will present the advantages of lower power for the same amount of signal processing needed, smaller package size availability, temperature stability and the ability to fit into smaller QFN and BGA packaging. Also, 24 bit dynamic range, thanks to a 12 Bit Analog to Digital Converter and a programmable gain block reduces the power and size of the complete system.
One alleged advantage of digitals signal processing is the ease of making changes. However, system design space is so tight; there is not room for external ROM or RAM. Code must be masked on the DSP. With staged wafers, changes to the analog signal processor can be turned around as quickly as a FPGA or DSP revision.
Here is the complete paper in PDF format.