Indeed, they put lot of effort into it, but the main problem was that they committed to the HW architecture with the expectation that compiler R&D would fix the

Indeed, they put lot of effort into it, but the main problem was that they committed to the HW architecture with the expectation that compiler R&D would fix the even by then well-known issue of generating good VLIW code for general-purpose software. Turned out this was a fatal mistake, and compiler tech has yet to advance to the level they expected. RISC, while older, at least was informed by what real compilers actually liked (lots of GPR's, simple instructions).