They tried this with Itanium and got beaten up constantly about how legacy performance was bad. Personally, I agree with you, but the market isn't rational. T

They tried this with Itanium and got beaten up constantly about how legacy performance was bad. Personally, I agree with you, but the market isn't rational. This paved the way for AMD to eat some of their lunch by making a "compatible" 64 bit ISA. Itanium could've been great for the kinds of workloads I was interested in at the time.