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"The thread about Itanium" is this one, lamenting the lack of exotic CPUs and how we're trapped in C-driven ISAs, which traps us in C, which traps us in C-driven ISAs:

libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-8…

If you support C in a performant way, you stay commercially viable. One way to still innovate is to glue two ISAs together, which I believe is what the #itanium did.

LoongISA is showing another way; extending the ISA with some help instructions without fully emulating in hardware. I wonder if the C compiler for LoongISA benefits from these x86 help instructions even when compiling native C.

It sounds like I'm equating x86 and C here, but I'm not really. I do assume though that MIPS is less C-driven than x86, which I assume is severely C-driven. Please jump in if that's all wrong.