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Would a chip (such as a CPLD/FPGA) implementing mmc/sd be an option? It could host a chainloader with PCIe support and serve as a kind of rom.

Also, is there any work on kernel level x86 emulation on arm for expansion roms?

I imagine it's limited quite a bit by the odd way the Pi boots. It's the GPU, not the CPU (or a BIOS type setup), that initially runs the bootloader.

its mostly that the bootloader has to be patched to see the devices, this is no easy feat as it would bloat the bootloader pretty hard. a chain boot of MicroSD to SSD is best at this time.

Closed source firmware bits, unfortunately.