[hawflakes]

I was at HP pre-Merced tape-out and HP did have a number of simulators available. I worked on a compiler-related team so we were downstream.

As for running linux in 32-bit compatibility mode, wasn't that the worst of all worlds on Merced? When I was there which was pre-Merced tape-out, a tiny bit of the chip was devoted to the IVE (Intel Value Engine) which the docs stated were supposed to be just good enough to book the firmware and then jump into IA64 mode. I figured at the time that this was the goal — boot in 32-bit x86 and then jump to 64-bit mode.

[demondemidi]

> wasn't that the worst of all worlds on Merced?

Yes, yes it was! It ended up playing a much larger role for marketing transition efforts, larger than it should have. But the Catch-22 has been analyzed to death.