Low-volume networking hardware comes to mind. Where you need very-high performace routing, but aren't shipping enough units to make up the cost of using an ASIC

Low-volume networking hardware comes to mind. Where you need very-high performace routing, but aren't shipping enough units to make up the cost of using an ASIC. The aren't many of the them so power usage isn't a bit cost, but their performance effects the performance of many other machines, where most of the power draw is.