[throwawayish]

IA64 failed because it was a bad answer to a question no one asked. AMD got it right, that's why AMD64 won.

[rleigh]

Yes, but none of this thread is about this specific platform and its merits, it's about the different strategies for supporting multiple platforms, and where Microsoft through the choices they made failed to realise their own full potential on non-x86 platforms while other organisations managed to fully support them.

[pjmlp]

AMD managed to produce x64 thanks to the licenses they had from Intel, otherwise this laptop would be powered by an IA64 processor.

[andreiw]

No, it wouldn't.

Sometimes I wonder if IA-64 was just an exercise in killing of Alpha and HP-PA...

Anyway, x64 succeeded because instead of producing something no one asked for, and poorly (IA-64), AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that.

[pjmlp]

Sure it would.

If Intel had transitioned their processor line to IA64, without AMD to defy their roadmap, do you really believe consumer desktops would magically start using other vendor processors?

> AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that.

Because they still had the cross-license deal with Intel that allowed them to legally build x86 clones.

No x86 licenses, no x64.

[andreiw]

We're talking complete hypotethicals. When x64 was introduced, not only weren't there any consumer Itanium chips, but they weren't even hypothetical.

[pjmlp]

Of course it is hypotheticals, that is what talking about alternatives is all about.