And, at a higher level, Unix vendor-specific processor designs were on the way out. Designing and manufacturing a processor just for your relatively low volumes in the scheme of things Unix systems was just way too expensive.

One of the other problems with Itanium was that it was supposed to be an "industry standard" 64-bit processor. But Intel and HP were never quite able to square that with a situation where HP at least saw themselves as more equal than others given their role in the design.