The whole thing is weird. The Itanium is as much an HP project as it is an Intel one. While HP and Intel are busy creating the IA64, Compaq is licensing the EV6

The whole thing is weird. The Itanium is as much an HP project as it is an Intel one. While HP and Intel are busy creating the IA64, Compaq is licensing the EV6 bus to AMD, for use in the Athlon. If the Athlon hadn't been a success, I don't believe that AMD would have had the funds to develop the first AMD64 processors. Then a few years later, Compaq is bought by HP, which does nothing with the remaining DEC/Alpha IP, the same tech that helped AMD build the Athlons.