A-Eon have made it clear several times that the XMOS chip was Varisys' idea, rather than theirs and has been put on as an almost free extra (£10 or so on a £1500+ board).
Yes, they talked about it in their marketing blurb, but they have consistently avoiding saying what it could be used for and instead made it clear that it would be up to the users to find interesting things to do with it.
The hype came from certain over-enthusiastic community members, NOT A-Eon or Hyperion.
It's the main selling point on the A-eon website. Since they won't talk about the CPU, "Xena" and "Xorro" are the only way the X1000 has to distinguish itself. The whole color scheme of the original "X" logo came from the XMOS website.
Just because nobody has yet managed to come up with a purpose for the XMOS chip to be on the mobo doesn't mean it isn't A-eon's main marketing ploy.
