I'm no CPU designer, but I seem to remember that Intel took the crown back from AMD with the Core 2 Duo. IIRC, that involved going back to an older design and going down a different path.

If Itanium was just ahead of its time, Intel could always try again. ARM and RISC-V are getting a lot of attention these days. Mill seems to be missing the window of opportunity. 2-nm fab seems like a fantasy. Announcing the new Gadolinium processor family wouldn't be a complete cringe.

Or... maybe it really isn't the way forward.