[jacquesm]

Mostly a matter of MOC. If you're a hobbyist that definitely isn't going to fly. If you need a few million chips then you're going to be able to make a deal.

The problem is that chips like that are about as hacker unfriendly as they could be. But in industry hardly any of that matters.

Being in the middle - hundreds to tens of thousands of units to ship - is the toughest place of all. No vendors will talk to you and you're going to be out of options if someone decides to EOL that chip your design depends on.

In that case I would advise to only use open hardware and to take the associated performance, size and power requirements hit. At least your product will live.