Notes from the Intelpocalypse

Intel did have a good try at removing speculative execution from the processor: with Itanium, as I understand it, any speculative load instructions have to be put in by the compiler explicitly. As you say, it didn't take off because nobody could be bothered to switch to the advanced compiler technology needed. (Well, there may be other reasons why Itanic sank, and in some ways we are better off not having an Intel-proprietary instruction set, but certainly industry inertia was part of it.)