I have been working on a custom board using the AP7002, and I am relying heavily on the NGW100 reference design for the base systems, as the AP7002 datasheet kinda sucks (over 800 pages and no dedicated section about clock systems makes no sense to me...).
On the NGW100 there is an ATtiny24, that seems to be used just to assert a boardwide reset, and to provide I2C (TWI) to the expansion header.. My question is does the chip serve any critical purpose other than take space on the board? I can manage the resets without it, and do not need it for TWI, but will it break some major stuff when I am ready to load linux on it?