nVidia not involved in the Lucid MSI Dispute at all

Lucid Talks
As we mentioned above we had the chance to talk to just about everyone involved [with the exception of an actual employee of Lucidlogix]. When it comes to the center player of this deal, our contact was with Kimberly Stowe of Stowe Consulting. We know Kim for years now, as she worked with nVidia in the past and is generally a person that is well suited for stormy waters of PC component business. From them we learned that the PR event was setup at the last minute, and that the reason behind the limited number of press representatives was due to Lucid not wanting to step on MSI’s toes. We were told that Stowe was given a list of people [by LucidLogix] that they could not contact about this, they were all people that were on a on the list to receive a sample of Big Bang Fuzion directly from MSI. Now, we found this interesting as with the coverage MSI has gotten from the three event attendees - we were be pretty sure that at least one of them will be getting a sample from MSI. In fact, in an e-mail directed to BSN*s Editor-in-Chief, it was stated the following: "We did this at the last minute and since you are in Europe, it didn't seem very feasible to fly you out."

BSN*s own Theo gave us the following statement: "In the past, the shortest inter-continental call up was five hours between the call and my departure for the airport. I have received a call at 2AM CET with the note "can you fly to Seattle". Within five hours, I was at the airport embarking on a 16 hour journey, no questions asked. Secondly, BSN* is a global office and we do have staff within 90min of flight from LucidLogix's office in Santa Clara."
As it turns out, in the United States of America, BSN* has staff in New York, Massachusetts, Florida and California [in Sacramento and San Diego], it would have been pretty easy to call or e-mail and see if we would be able to attend but that is getting off of the subject.

Next is the demo system itself; this was a Lucid prepared system that was intended to show the first real performance numbers from the system. Stowe told us that Lucid did this because they had never released any before and it did not look like MSI would be doing so anytime soon. Yet the rub is that this is on a reference board that would never be available to a consumer. The board is external and relies on a PCIe x16 extension card in the host system to transfer data back and forth. This is similar to the ELSA products we have seen advertised. When I asked why a retail version of the product was not used I was told that the only retail products out are based on Hydra 100 and this was a Hydra 200 demo. Thus, a prototype of Adventure 2000 board was used.

Now remember the purpose of this demo is to show that Hydra is working, there are no issues with the drivers and to of course show off how well the system scales. You would think that they might have used a better system to show this ,but again we hear from Lucid that they did not want to step on MSI’s toes so they would not use a Big Bang Fuzion board to show off the numbers. Then [as you can read in the three previews] there is no "mix and match" support [Lucid says it is planned for Q1 2010], Windows 7 support was a shock to Lucid and there are still more than a few bugs with textures in the current drivers. Bear in mind that at all times, Lucid's homepage was showing [and still is] that Hydra 200 is ready, as you can see on the picture.

So with all of that in mind here is Lucid’s statement as givento us by Stowe Consulting:

"Lucid provided a few members of the press with a 'hands on preview' of a Lucid development board connected to a PC motherboard based on the Gigabyte X58 platform. All reviewers had access to the exact same system for testing. The preview was not meant to be perceived as a review or full blown consumer product evaluation.  Merely, it was an opportunity for the first time for a peak at the progress that Lucid has made with its product.  We have been requested by many people since last IDF to see actual performance numbers, so we simply wanted to demonstrate what the HYDRA 200 is capable of today and show that we are taking the right technological steps towards bringing aconsumer product to market. 

There has been quite a bit of confusion surrounding our relationship with partner MSI and why the product has been delayed until Q1. So, let’s clear that up. At IDF Fall 2009 Lucid announced, together with MSI, availability of the HYDRA 200 in Big Bang Motherboards on October 29. Up until that date, Lucid had met all requested MSI hardware and software requirements.
 
Since then, MSI  has revised their launch contents and plan, and Lucid is happily supporting them. At this time, we are responding to our customer’s request and are working at full speed with them to deliver a feature-rich product that they will deem consumer-ready. We are confident that we will be able to meet MSI’s requirements in a timely manner. Beyond that, the Big Bang Fuzion product availability and specifications should be directly addressed to our partner, MSI."