I'm not sure why Amazon won't try to recoup some of the investment by designing and marketing other boards / devices with this chip, or by just selling it in quantities to some manufacturers (think telecom, home entertainment, industrial equipment, etc).

Based upon my experience, I’d say it’s going to be profitable in its own right just by powering EC2 instances. The same argument could be said to apply to Apple’s ARM chips.

> the power profile is intellectually interesting, but not likely to ever enter the public sphere.

It does have an impact on operational cost, and cost is a very important factor.

If something is possible and economical then others will copy it in time.