A hack to workaround the absence of PCI. The X1000 however does have PCI...
While that's true I think your missing my point entirely.
We simply don't know what standards will become popular over the next few years. OK, we can guess, but that's all. It could be that Thunderbolt will be very popular within a couple of years... or not.
Can XMOS be used for adding a Thunderbolt port? Would we want one? I don't know, I'm not that techie or prescient, I'm an artist dammit. My point was that in the future we may end up being thankful for an option that doesn't seem so useful now.
I've said before that I would have rather seen an FPGA on the board instead but we have Xorro and Xena, Hyperion doesn't make the choices I would have made all of the time, that's for sure. Only time will tell how useful it really is.