Wow, another great explanation!

I didn't know these things, I don't think they are part of the meme-lore about Itanium:

- The problems with the fast load misses and compiler support

- I didn't understand the implications of a completely visible register file

- The trouble with "hard coding" three execution units. Very bad if you can't recompile your code and/or bytecde to a new binary when you get a new CPU.

Your last point about coding your way out of the ecosystem, I wonder if that might have been a reason for why Intel didn't go all-in to make Itanium the Java machine...