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About LinkBacksRead more.Rumours and leaked roadmap from Japan say “Hai” (yes).
Read more.Rumours and leaked roadmap from Japan say “Hai” (yes).
The package used will not determine whether they will be socketed; the cost of the socket and whether it suits the product will determine it.
You can get sockets for BGAs now. They're usually very expensive because the only people that use them are companies buying very small quantities for a specific pitch and pin-out in order to test a batch of chips in a test harness they've built.
However, when Intel/AMD decides on a new package design and suddenly several million of the sockets are going to be needed, the per-unit cost drops somewhat.
Look at LGA and all the low-pitch pins on the socket itself - very expensive unless you're making a hell of a lot of them.
The only thing that might be a problem is that with BGA, unless the socket is well designed and great care taken during insert/remove, the balls will start to fall off, so there's certainly a case there for soldering directly onto the mainboard.
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Time will show.
I think I mentioned it elsewhere, but I wonder, if Intel did enforce this, would we see motherboard MFRs releasing CPUs soldered to a third-party socket system? In theory it seems plausible but it would need companies to come together and standardise something or it would be impractical due to cooler mounting/brand incompatibility/cost. I'm wondering if the added path length may cause problems though. I can't see a load of the almost entirely enthusiast-oriented brands just giving up because Intel said 'jump'.
Personally I think this is all based on a misinterpretation anyway...
there's a lot that could happen here, as mentioned, it could be simply part of the old smoke and mirrors, or it could be something else entirely.
For one thing, if such a change did take place, it would force manufacturers to release each one of their motherboards with a range of chips, thus increasing the potential ranges, this wouldn't be good for the market or the manufacturers, and would likely lead to a lot of them ditching intel as a supplier, this however could be a move by intel to force consumers into buying intel only cpu&board, though that would not be a tremendously good move where market forces are concerned.
The next option would be to create a third party socket system, as was done with the original slot mounts or even original 'overdrive' chips, maybe intel themselves want to go back to slots? As mentioned though, that would cause compatability issues for cooling.. but nothing that couldn't be worked out I am sure, socket+interface+chip, should result in a pretty standard height I would expect.
Thirdly of course, there is AMD, which I think would be the reason that intel would not go down this route entirely, while the enthusiast market is small, compared to corporate and new-pc sales, it is significant enough. And should intel go down the route of forcing people into specific hardware solutions, I would expect that more and more consumers, including big business, would abandon intel in favour of a more flexible approach.
I can see there being applications where a less flexible approach would be more useful, such as tablets and smaller netbook type designs, where hardware flexibility is pretty much unnecessary, but at the end of the day, for desktop computers, be they personal or corporate, adaptability is the key. "Adapt and Overcome" is the old saying.. Inflexible and rigid regimes, tend to fall flat on their faces..
Quoth the server... "404"
In all honesty it's probably not that big of a deal for 99% of CPU sales - how many people really upgrade their CPU, most of the time a fresh install, RAM, graphics or storage update is a more visible improvement - how many times is the CPU the bottleneck now? Given that Intel are increasingly integrating accelerator things into the chip like Quicksync a CPU can last years and still seem quick. Writing this on a Q6600, not even overclocked - this is my work PC and never feels slow. PCs/laptops are following a trend of becoming more integrated and disposable as the market matures, whole device replacement.
That said, looking at the roadmap above the red circled Broadwell appears to be in the higher end mobile row and the LGA row at the top features a rather inconclusive ? - this article is totally rampant speculation.
Daughterboards would be more expensive than sockets. They'd need a hell of a lot more pins on them than they used to have, would create quite a lot of routing and signalling problems, and would probably need a power connector and power circuitry rather than get it off the motherboard.
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Yeah, it doesn't sound a big deal. People just don't need to upgrade CPUs these days, modern CPUs tend to last just as long as the associated chipset. Any sensible upgrade I wanted to make today would require a new motherboard anyway.
But the range of MoBo features would be dependent on the CPU, then. Basically.
It might not seem a huge deal to a few end users, but it would be a huge deal for motherboard MFRs as has been mentioned before - having a separate part for every CPU Intel make is a logistical nightmare. It may not have a considerable negative impact on everyone but there are no benefits from such a closed system.
Sounds like a money making scheme to me..
Yeah that's what I thought, even IF true it doesn't necessarily kill the DIY market, just means that instead of buying board and CPU you buy board with CPU soldered on and upgrade that as a whole. There could even be enthusiast boards in maybe 2-3 SKUs with different CPUs fitted - in practice there are few common CPU/board combos, it's not like you really see many Celeron's on a £300 Asus ROG board.Originally Posted by Willzzz
Motherboards are getting simpler as more stuff moves onto the CPU package, many are little more than a load of sockets and an I/O controller, perhaps we should think of it more like integrating the motherboard onto the CPU ;-)
Who'd have thunk it, a company trying to make money! It might cause that though, imagine if your motherboard breaks, instead of replacing a £50 board now it's a £150 board-CPU combo... although larger OEMs might have the capability to fix up the boards in their warranty programs.
of course the only problem then is that the whole motherboard would have to be replaced if there is a failure in the cpu or a socket, so the cost *could* rise. Pros and cons to both methods of course, but I imagine that it would hurt sales of the higher end components more than lower cost ones as they are overkill to many many people. Surprised Intel would want to suddenly start trying to compete with AMD totally as it would rapidly become a race to get good enough performance at a price point of say £150 for the motherboard and CPU combo with little chance of people buying the higher priced units. Supply and demand would simply mean that the more expensive CPU's would not sell at all
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Motherboard manufacturers would have to cut their ranges by 80%. Currently I can buy a £70 board or a £200 board and drop whatever processor I like into it which is far more efficient than asking a motherboard manufacturer to attach 40 different chips to it. Just look at how vast the socket 1155 range is.
If a component on the motherboard dies you'll need to buy a new board with associated chip, that has to be more expensive than just buying a new board.
Maybe we'll see a massive rationalisation of parts/components which would reduce costs. Most people don't need anything more than a dual core/4gb ram machine.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
I imagine this makes a lot of sense for business PC - After all what business wants anything more than a base level CPU (i.e Pentium G620) in most workstations? If this means someone like intel can chuck out a motherboard/cpu product for little more than a CPU on its own used to cost won't it help with sales in this sort of market? I'm sure Dell/HP will love it for this very reason. I expect the higher end components will still be modularised for a while yet though.
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