It depends on your definition of "normal". A lot of high-end chips are completely unavailable on the open market, with manufacturers often not even willing to p

It depends on your definition of "normal". A lot of high-end chips are completely unavailable on the open market, with manufacturers often not even willing to publish a product brief - let alone a datasheet. Try finding a Displayport MST hub chip, for example! Things are indeed very different for the RP2040. They are widely available in both small and large quantities, and have excellent documentation publicly available. Alas, they are not SoCs!