John,
What most small boat rigs (cats, dinghy’s, skiffs) are striving for upwind is to depower the rig in a gust, and to keep boat as powered up as possible for the wind and righting moment of the boat. A powerful rig on a small lightweight boat is great until the wind exceeds your righting effort, then it needs to have some depowering mechanisms or you end up swimming.

Dighy's and cats do this in different ways, dinghy’s (generally) have fixed round-ish masts, and cats (generally) have rotating masts that are teardrop or wing mast shaped.

The mast you are referring to makes the top of the mast more bendy than the bottom, so the top "bends off" in a gust. If you look at an i14, it has double spreaders and control lines for each set of spreaders, so you can control the bend of the top of the mast vs the bottom of the mast. This is a way to control the way the mast bends off in a gust and can help keep the boat powered up in a range of wind conditions. Its overly complicated in my opinion.

A modern catamaran rig, which rotates, has a wingmast shape, a powerful downhaul, and a square head sail and you have lots ways to adjust your rig the wind conditions. Add in a carbon mast which can be customized to your weight and bend characteristics specified by your sail maker and you have one of the most advanced rigs available today. The modern A cat rig is a good example of all of these advanced features. A modern rotating cat rig is a very clean, elegant, and forward thinking way to adjust your rig for a wide range of wind conditions, I am surprised the skiff/dinghy world doesnt embrace it.

Wouter will be able to catalog the current high tech cats and their masts. He posted a discussion on wing masts a while back which speaks to some of this. Maybe a dinghy sailor can help us with the current thinking on dinghy masts.

A comp tip has no redeeming sailing qualities, I've heard discussions that it is too flexible. No other modern catamaran mast has a comp tip. So that should tell you something.

Bill