[nordsieck]

> Erm, Itanium never had any kind of market leadership. It was a failure.

That's true. But part of the reason Itanium as a failure is because AMD came out with x86-64, which was so successful that Intel ended up being forced to adopt it (it didn't help that the first generation of Itanium chips was... underwhelming).

[Sakos]

I think the general consensus is that AMD could only swoop in as it did because Itanium was such a disaster of epic proportions, both technically and on a management level. There was no way Itanium was ever going to be successful. x86-64 was just the final nail in the coffin.