They were too early, and with that didn't target a viable niche before going for the big things when 64 bit came along. Something like a 32-bit ARM tied to hard

They were too early, and with that didn't target a viable niche before going for the big things when 64 bit came along. Something like a 32-bit ARM tied to hardware that accelerates running memcached could have been viable for quite some time, for example. nVidia probably have a long term vision not dissimilar to that, with the ARM being a mere general purpose front end for an attached GPU, and looking at the new game consoles that appears to be the way many things are headed there too. This will predictably cause the Intel brigade to cheer up, but it will be temporary. In the time since Calxeda started ARM has just consolidated and grown, especially into home routers where MIPS is looking increasingly like it's gone for good. Ultimately when ARM do finally crack the data centre the impact is going to be profit margins for almost all chip players going down very fast. Going into this market without a USP that isn't simply cheap general purpose SoC is destined to end in trouble. If you look at the players that survived on mobile they aren't just integration outfits for ARM/Imagination, but actually add value through other custom pieces too, either GPUs (say nVidia) or re-implementing the core themselves, like Qualcomm. This is at the point where I really hope Imagination do something good with MIPS and it isn't consigned to history as ARM being too dominant could prove to be a real mess.