[_ph_]

They tried a couple of times, but I wonder whether they tried hard enough. Admittedly, that the Itanium failed was partially AMDs fault, which breathed new life into x86 by their 64 bit extensions. But besides a slow start, Intel didn't seem to be in a hurry to push Itanium down the line and offer for example a cheap cpu+motherboard combo for enthusiasts. While Itanium for a while had a relatively large transistor count, by todays standards it is tiny, any smartphone cpu is way larger. The last Itanium was made in a 32nm process, imagine it in today 10nm. Especially with markets shifting, more computing in the cloud, Itanium based servers could be really strong, if Intel just would make them.

Also, Intel declined to make a cpu for the iPhone, dropped their own ARM line and also didn't get into fabbing for other companies when they still had a large lead in fab technology.

I do get the impression, Intel was far to happy selling x86 chips. Which worked and gave them lots of revenues, till they got stuck with the 10nm process. And of course while TSMC grew into the power it is today.