
Intel fakes Ivy Bridge graphics on stage at CES - FrancescoRizzi
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/09/intel-fakes-ivy-bridge-graphics-on-stage-at-ces/#.TwxZbbHEzzU.hackernews
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marshray
Watch the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGrPyMKA_k>

That wasn't a fake demo. That was a presentation which included a video where
the presenter was joking around like it was live for about 10 seconds. No one
in the audience was deceived, you can hear they got a good-natured chuckle out
of it.

SemiAccurate is flatly misrepresenting this IMHO.

~~~
abuzzooz
He said that "they are running it from backstage", which doesn't seem to be
true. It seems to be a video running on the machine on stage (hence the VLC
controls).

Given the rumors that Intel is delaying IvyBridge, it is very possible that
they recorded this on a different machine, with a different GPU, and are
claiming otherwise. They're not the first, nor the last to do this.

~~~
marshray
His words are a little hard to understand but he says: "because I am running
it from backstage [audience laughter]". This takes it out of the "live demo"
category in my mind.

"It's still a DX11 and I wanted all of you to see it because people were
critizing us, when are you going to implement" ... OK that sort of sounds like
he's claiming that DX11 is part of the product.

"We are delivering it with Ivy Bridge" This is a pretty clear claim about a
product... but it's obviously not a shipping product yet.

It should have been clear to everyone in the audience that he was not really
demoing the game on stage but that DX11 support is a promised feature of the
upcoming Ivy Bridge product.

------
seanalltogether
Anandtech confirmed that a similar machine can run the game though

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/5359/intel-confirms-working-
dx...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5359/intel-confirms-working-dx11-on-ivy-
bridge)

------
biasedstudy
Funniest Intel fake I ever saw this: Intel had a demo booth at at computer
covention where they ... ta da ... were demonstrating the latest whatever. I
peered inside the computers and had a good chuckle. This was obviously run by
the marketing guys on the cheap because the "intel inside" ... was actually
and AMD chip.

~~~
furyg3
A long, long time ago, Compaq was demoing some gigantic new server which had
redundant, hot swappable everything. As the presenter mentioned that you could
simply pull out a DIMM on the fly, my friend reached in and did so, which
powered off the machine completely.

Probably the most stressful job in the world is giving high-profile tech
demo's...

~~~
sjs
Funny anecdote, but does "hot swap" necessarily mean "yank out without
warning"? My understanding is that you might need to tell the kernel that you
are going to yank out a component before doing so. Similarly after adding in a
component you might have to poke the kernel and say "hey, new stuff here"
before you can use it.

~~~
marshray
Well he said it was "redundant everything".

Still, I suspect it was probably designed to handle unexpected 1-bit errors
and, like you're saying, allow for replacing RAM modules with the cooperation
of the OS.

------
endianswap
Regardless of whether or not Intel's hardware can run a DX11 game well,
doesn't it seem to be in bad taste to pretend to be playing a game when in
reality you are at best streaming from backstage and at worst playing back a
precanned recording? I feel like it is as if I downloaded a tech demo from
graphics engine people and it ended up being an EXE wrapping a movie. Sure it
might look pretty, but is that what people are expecting to see?

~~~
mansr
This is standard fare on trade shows. It is probably done, one hopes, not as
much to outright mislead as to avoid embarrassing malfunctions on the show
floor.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
It is mostly done (at least in this case, probably most cases) because it
doesn't actually work and they aren't finished yet.

I think it is in good faith - they aren't intending to lie or deceive, but
it's show and tell time and the product isn't ready. I still think it goes
against the spirit of a tech demo and is pretty dishonest. Intel have very
aggressive schedules lately, so this isn't surprising.

That is also why they knowingly ship broken chips lately:

[http://www.techpowerup.com/156625/Intel-
Core-i7-3960X-and-i7...](http://www.techpowerup.com/156625/Intel-
Core-i7-3960X-and-i7-3930K-CPUs-Transitioning-to-C2-stepping-in-January.html)

~~~
sliverstorm
Yup. The whole industry runs something like two years ahead of current
capabilities- that is to say, you start designing a product two years before
it can be made- and the instant it actually works & has been tested, it is
time to ship.

------
asto
Didn't look like he was trying to fake anything at all. The VLC control bar
was in plain view on a screen in front of everyone! Then he lets the audience
in on the gag by letting go of the wheel while the video continues to roll.

------
sjs
SemiAccurate loves drama. Take everything you read on that site with a grain
of salt. (Especially if it has to do with Nvidia. Charlie _hates_ Nvidia.)

~~~
FrancescoRizzi
Sound advice.. then again: take everything you read online with a grain of
salt :) And everything you read offline or hear on TV with a truckload of the
same :)

~~~
baq
Don't believe everything you've read on the Internet. \-- Albert Einstein

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jbk
Yay! They used VLC! \o/

Deactivating OSD and fullscreen controller is not really hard, it is on the
main page of the simple preferences...

Anyhow, I don't think they pretended it was actually playing the game.

------
MHBerryman
VLC has support for streaming video content and receiving it; I presumed that
was how they were running it. Semi accurate sounds about right!

------
aneth
In case you haven't watched the video, this article completely misrepresents
what actually happened. The author takes things a bit too literally, and lacks
a sense of humor and sarcasm. It's pretty clear the presenter intended to
reveal his brief deception and was only pretending to play.

