Part of the reason is that Itanium hardware has always been expensive. You need the full hardware to compare against (not just CPU but also to test firmware and

Part of the reason is that Itanium hardware has always been expensive. You need the full hardware to compare against (not just CPU but also to test firmware and OS). A number of years ago I was interested in kickstarting QEMU development for it by building on the existing work and adding a new virtual platform. But HP Itanium hardware in Europe is still prohibitively expensive for me and disappears quickly.