Last year on another transceiver (QSFP28) teardown[0] I was surprised to find out that transceivers not marketed as "smart" also have SOCs inside them to regulate internal temperature. I had always thought the devices were "dumber" and never bothered to look inside.

So programmable CPUs in your transceivers might be more common than one would think.

[0] https://twitter.com/kwf/status/1470508119725805570