You really do an amazing job writing these up. Back when I used to work at ARM and attended the 3rd workshop, I ended up just pointing people to your write-up rather than my own notes.
As someone who voted "against" Uber/Lyft, I can promise you their PACs misleading and blatantly false propaganda regarding the city ordinance directly caused them to lose my vote. That and people love getting 4 fliers per day in their mailbox.
Eh, Wentzlaff (professor behind this) co-founded Tilera. He can definitely make something others could use. I view him doing OpenPiton as an attempt to give back to researchers now that he has become a prof.
$100 = Would buy this on a whim on the off-chance it's usable. Also, would consider buying 12x of them to outfit an undergrad lab.
$1000 = Have to have a clear project/vision in mind of how the board would be used and how other methods (FPGA/emulation) couldn't suffice.