Yes, but the CPU pipeline is years long. So years before Alpha, Sparc, MIPS, PA-Risc and related CPUs had to decide if the R&D for a next generation CPU made s

Yes, but the CPU pipeline is years long. So years before Alpha, Sparc, MIPS, PA-Risc and related CPUs had to decide if the R&D for a next generation CPU made sense in the face of the announced Itanium which most believes was going to dominate the server industry. When the Itanium shipped years late and slower than expected it was too late for any of the competition (except Power) to recover. Granted the x86-64s were ramping up and they would have all had tough competition, even without Itanium.