Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

I guess these "commitments" to Itanium were not cheap.

I guess they were willing to pay the price to move to a uP family with significantly
higher FP performance and scalability than either their own MIPS family or the
alternative 64 bit merchant processor from AMD. They needed a stand-out product,
not a 3rd tier OEM's me-too-er, to survive and it looks like they got it, courtesy of Intel.