I don't see it as lowering the cost of entry much (i.e. FPGA chip with reasonable number of gates for Linux is on the order of 50EUR/pc, and general purpose CPU

I don't see it as lowering the cost of entry much (i.e. FPGA chip with reasonable number of gates for Linux is on the order of 50EUR/pc, and general purpose CPU performance is not even remotely close to, let's say Allwinner or Rockchip ARM SoC), but as something that either opens up new possibilities as a whole (for example, a trusted computing platform, where you can actually verify that no backdoors exist- see https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5971 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5971 ) or something that provides unprecedented flexibility in the future proofness of embedded designs: for example when you realize that you need another UART in a product that's been shipping for 5 years, and the MCU family you have been using just does not have the part you need. I am particularly excited about the hardware flexibility- it seems a very good platform for scientific/engineering instrumentation (LiteX actually seems to be conceived because of this niche).