Microsoft was committed to supporting Windows on Itanium but Intel mucked it up in several areas - if they perhaps got AMD onboard (a free license to the archit

Microsoft was committed to supporting Windows on Itanium but Intel mucked it up in several areas - if they perhaps got AMD onboard (a free license to the architecture - which would have made AMD64 moot) and made the first variant faster than x86 and consumer priced/focussed. I am afraid that X86 will live on forever more with just more wacko instruction extensions that nobody will use.