HP extended its 8×00 series a few times, as Itanium couldn’t quite do what it was being marketed to do. Eventually … years later … 8×00 died more due to lack of targeting it as a priority platform by ISVs, rather than by CPU-icide on the part of Itanium.

Itanium conquered Forrest Basket at SGI. Alien and Beast would have been formidable chips well into the first half of this millenium had they not been killed. MIPS died in large part to a massive exodus after critical projects were killed. R12k and R14k were for the most part, die shrinks and respins of R10k. Very little new capability. The compiler is what won the day.

I do remember being in meetings where I asked management what our “plan B” was. I got nothing but quizzical looks. Plan-B? Who needs a plan B? Itanium will sell millions according to some research firm.

This is the bill of goods sold to SGI (and others). End result, lots of projects canceled. Good very competitive products axed. Itanium “won”.

For the vendors that had this battle wage internally, this was nothing but a phyrric victory for them. The results of the commitment to Itanium were, in many ways, devastating to the ability of these groups to offer differentiated solutions.