> - Intel Itanium, which (besides some other problems) needed a super-smart compiler (which never existed) so that programs could make use of its potential Wel

> - Intel Itanium, which (besides some other problems) needed a super-smart compiler (which never existed) so that programs could make use of its potential Well, no such thing is possible. Memory access and branch prediction patterns are too dynamic for a compiler to be able to schedule basically anything ahead of time. A JIT with a lot of instrumentation could do somewhat better, but it'd be very expensive.