In living "cameras" discussed above the post-processing is performed in the main "CPU".
Although there is a region of that CPU dedicated to it, albeit vaguely defined, so you might argue that is "kind of" like a separate unit

Exactly my point. Neither will stop evolving. And given the head start of one and intrinsic technical difficulties with the other, the chance of catching up is absolutely zero.

Or think of it this way. A dedicated device optimized to do one task well can never be overtaken by a universal device that has to make compromises to do multiple tasks well enough.