For people familiar with Intel's Tick-Tock cadence - this should not come as much surprise. Some people may have gotten caught up in marketing and expected more, but this is a "Tick" which brings a process shrink, power savings, and a modest performance increase. It is just about delivering that, though perhaps on the softer side of things.
Sandy Bridge was a Tock - a BIG performance improvement. Haswell should be a Tock - a BIG performance improvement.
On the tick, they set more modest performance goals, and focus on getting the process shrink right and tuning things up. On the tock, they should knock our socks off. So maybe Ivy Bridge is disappointing, but perhaps familiarity with their product development strategy helps to manage expectations
1.9V lifespan would be measured in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. At room temperature, 1.9V would damage the processor almost immediately, if not kill it.
In fancy demonstrations and testing like this, the main magic comes not from voltage, but from super conductivity within the processor at the cold temperatures. The cold also increases the lifespan of the chip when using exorbitant amounts of voltage. This doesn't matter to most people or maybe even the poster I'm replying to, but I'm mentioning it here for the general knowledge of anyone who may be interested in speaking accurately about this.
Ultimately though, its the cold that raises the frequency ceiling - sure the voltage helps, but with super-cooled temperatures alone the frequency ceiling is raised even at default voltage./p.
/* Halley */ (Halley's comment.)
