The problem wasn't technical, it was the lack of "buckets of money" that intel had access to, combined with customers that demanded backwards compatibility. In

The problem wasn't technical, it was the lack of "buckets of money" that intel had access to, combined with customers that demanded backwards compatibility. Intel tried at least twice to move them away to i860 or Itanic and failed. So, improve x86 was the winning bet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796469