Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[alan81]

There were many reasons for Itanium...
Certainly, one was the fact that Intel owned all the IP, and nobody would be allowed to copy it.
I think the original driving force was a belief across all the industry experts that CISC would not scale and RISC, or something like it, would take over with a significant performance lead. Apple sure bought into this as they converted their entire customer base from 68K to PPC at a fairly significant cost. Many apple folks still believe the original marketing nonsense that RISC provides better performance for less power.
I view part of the big $$$ spent on Itanium as a contingency plan, and part toward penetration into the server market. With the success of superscaler OOO CISC, I think Intel gave up on Itanium taking over the desktop.
--Alan