To add to this, the IA64 required specialist knowledge to get to run efficiently, given that you've just spent a huge amount on new hardware, you also had to po

To add to this, the IA64 required specialist knowledge to get to run efficiently, given that you've just spent a huge amount on new hardware, you also had to port your stuff to take advantage of the new arch. From what I recall, x86 emulation was there, but just really slow. So for a few HPC type things, it was an a leap forward, for everything else, it sucked. It was like the arm based windows surface laptops a few years ago. Lots of promise, none of the software that you actually wanted. When you looked at the opteron which was 64 bit, run faster, cheaper than the intel and could run vanilla 32bit apps without any changes faster than before, it was a no brainer.