Spot on. I think it's also important to point out that "the compiler will fix it" line wasn't new with Itanic. The Multiflow guys (for one) said the same thin

Spot on. I think it's also important to point out that "the compiler will fix it" line wasn't new with Itanic. The Multiflow guys (for one) said the same thing for their Trace line of VLIW machines 15 years or so before HP & Intel, and that didn't work so well. So now, 40 years down the line, can the compiler really fix it, or do we acknowledge that maybe some things are theoretically nifty but don't work out in practice and move on? I don't know the answer to that, but I have my suspicions.