Seems shortsighted (I'm not saying you're wrong, I can imagine Intel being shortsighted). Surely the advantage of artificial segmentation is that it's artificial: you don't double up the R&D costs.
Maybe they thought they would just freeze x86 architecturally going forward and Itanium would be nearly all future R&D. Not a bet I would have taken but Intel probably felt pretty unstoppable back then.
trashface|2 months ago