The Itanium wasn't just designed as a workstation CPU it was designed to be superior to existing high-end systems and then over time with volume be the eventual

The Itanium wasn't just designed as a workstation CPU it was designed to be superior to existing high-end systems and then over time with volume be the eventual x86 replacement. The business case for itanium didn't work as a workstation cpu. >>Intel and HP show up promising a clean sheet design in a decade doesn't seem like a time to roll up your market leading offering and go home. They didn't roll up so much as have their existing market disappear. SGI, DEC and Compaq were dead. Sparc and Power gradually transitioned away from any workstation offering to servers.