[scrlk]

A different twist on the Itanium: technically bad but ended up as a strategic win for Intel.

SGI, Compaq and HP mothballed development of their own CPUs (MIPS/Alpha/PA-RISC) as they all settled on Itanium for future products.

After Itanium turned out to be a flop, those companies adopted x86-64 - Intel killed off 3 competing ISAs by shipping a bad product.

[sanguy]

Very true, it was the end of the DEC Alpha as Compaq chose the Itanic.

[npunt]

Itanium was the OS/2 of chips, Microsoft used OS/2 to get IBM chasing a dead end while they baked Windows NT & 95 until their lead was secured.

[Melatonic]

Interesting take!