It does beg the question whether this is simply a chicken-and-egg problem.

When it is almost impossible to develop for, you only get big contracts because nobody else has the resources to design products for it. On the other hand, with good and free design tools the toy projects done by hobbyists and schools can serve as the catalyst for using it in medium-scale projects.

There are plenty of applications imaginable for something like Intel's SmartNIC platform - but you're not going to see any of them unless tinkerers can get their hands on them.