To me, in the 90s, it looked like Intel knew x86 was crap and needed replacing, but they couldn’t bring themselves to replace it with a RISC-ish architecture like everyone else was gravitating to. (That would be admitting defeat.). So they chose this VLIW design, which relied on some extrapolation of where compiler technology might go. But that didn’t happen.
I’m surprised it lasted as far as shipping products, let alone for 20 years of shipping products. There mist have been some very profitable locked-in customers somewhere. I don’t think that would happen today.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
