"Something of a tragedy: the Itanium was Bob Rau's design, and he died before he had a chance to do it right. His original efforts wound up being taken over for commercial reasons and changed into a machine that was rather different than what he had originally intended and the result was the Itanium. While it was his machine in many ways, it did not reflect his vision."

Quote from Ivan Goddard of Mill Computing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5hCjueqQ0&t=4054s

Bob Rau: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Rau