Around the time that the Itanium project was announced (and had presumably been being worked on behind the scenes for quite a while) was when Compaq bought DEC. HP wouldn't buy Compaq until about 5 years later. So Itanium was already well underway by the time switching to Alpha would have been a remote possibility.
Around the time that the Itanium project was announced (and had presumably been being worked on behind the scenes for quite a while) was when Compaq bought DEC. HP wouldn't buy Compaq until about 5 years later. So Itanium was already well underway by the time switching to Alpha would have been a remote possibility.