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Suck it, Internet rumors; Intel finally broke silence this morning telling Maximum PC that it would be offering socketed CPUs for the “foreseeable future.”
The statement should help calm the nerves of panicky enthusiasts who have been reading weeks of rumor stories saying the desktop PC would die along with interchangeable socketed-CPUs.
“Intel remains committed to the growing desktop enthusiast and channel markets, and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the foreseeable future for our customers and the Enthusiast DIY market,” Intel spokesman Daniel Snyder told Maximum PC. “However, Intel cannot comment on specific long-term product roadmap plans at this time, but will disclose more details later per our normal communication process.”
The statement by Intel is rare considering the company doesn’t like to comment on unreleased product let alone unreleased products three years and three generations away. That shows how the rumors have continued to build in critical mass over the last few weeks.
The rumor first surfaced when Japanese tech site PC Watch reported on a leaked roadmap the site obtained including Intel’s plans for Haswell to be the last processor in an LGA socket. After that, Intel would only offer the 14nm-based replacement, codenamed Broadwell in BGA trim. BGA or Ball Grid Array packages must be soldered to boards before being used. Since it’s nigh impossible for the average person to de-solder a processor from a motherboard it would effectively end the paradigm of making your CPU choice separate from the motherboard.
The PC Watch story spawned additional speculative stories and hundreds of heated discussions on forum boards around the Internet. Even wounded AMD got in on the action this morning when the company decided to take a dig at its competitor by reaffirming AMD’s commitment to sockets.
“AMD has a long history of supporting the DIY and enthusiast desktop market with socketed CPUs and APUs that are compatible with a wide range of motherboard products from our partners,” said AMD spokesman Chris Hook.
“That will continue through 2013 and 2014 with the 'Kaveri' APU and FX CPU lines. We have no plans at this time to move to BGA-only packaging and look forward to continuing to support this critical segment of the market. As the company that introduced new types of BGA packages in ultrathin platforms several years ago, and today offers BGA-packaged processors for everything from ultrathin notebooks to all-in-one desktops, to embedded applications and tablets, we certainly understand Intel's enthusiasm for the approach. But for the desktop market, and the enthusiasts with whom AMD has built its brand, we understand what matters to them and how we can continue to bring better value and a better experience.”
Of course, despite Intel’s statement that it is absolutely still supporting sockets will do little to stop the conspiracy theorists. Many will now want hard details on what “foreseeable future” means—details that Intel is loath to provide.
So is Intel likely to ever dump sockets and offer only BGA chips? Maximum PC’s view is that such a future is unlikely. First, server and workstation customers are unlikely to accept BGA products. And since Intel seems intent on offering a high-end product for enthusiasts such as the LGA2011 platform, enthusiasts would probably always have the big-boy socket to fall back to.
It’s also not clear on why Intel would move to a BGA-only for all desktops. The advantage of BGA chips is mostly done for space restraints in thin notebooks such as Ultrabooks. You could also argue there is a cost advantage since you don’t pay for a socket but a BGA configuration also means you toss the CPU if the motherboard went bad. It’s possible the leaked roadmap refers to the continuing popularity of mini PCs. In fact, Intel is already offering BGA CPUs soldered to motherboards with its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) experiment.
Intel's Next Unit of Computing features a CPU soldered on to the mobo.
However, Intel moving to BGA-only chips within three years would cause a very significant and painful change to the PC ecosystem and how they are built, sold, and marketed. Large OEMs such as Dell and HP, for example, like the flexibility to upsell customers from buying Celeron’s to $350 Core i7 chips. With socketed infrastructures, they can make such a change without rebuilding an entire system on the assembly line. With a BGA solution, the companies would have to start over if the consumer decided he or she wanted a faster CPU.
Kelt Reeves, owner of boutique PC maker Falcon Northwest said the rumors stories he has read are a bit over the top.
“For the past week I’ve seen some press about Broadwell being BGA-only that seems a bit hyperbolic. Everything from ‘this means Intel is destroying the motherboard makers to make everything themselves’ to ‘it will kill the enthusiast market’ to ‘it will force you to by a new $1,500 PC instead of just a new CPU,’” he said.
“I don’t foresee any of that. First, there will be other socketed enthusiast-oriented Intel parts out there, so we’re only talking about some CPUs. Second, if the CPU is soldered down and you want to upgrade, that doesn’t mean you have to buy a new PC, just a new motherboard to support the new CPU you’re upgrading to. If you upgrade your CPU every two years or so, you’re most likely moving to new chipset platforms they require (and thus buying a new motherboard) anyway. So I don’t see it necessarily being a big new expense for end users,”
But then on the other hand, if the rumor were true, it would be leave a lot of unanswered questions.
“Where it does get really questionable for me is in the supply chain,” Reeves said. “If you overclock your soldered-down K-SKU CPU and burn it out, did you kill the CPU or motherboard? And will your motherboard maker have to handle lots of RMA’s from overclockers that aren’t really (the motherboard maker’s) part failing? And the motherboard makers now not only have to stock a $200 motherboard as a piece of inventory, they have to stock a $500 CPU and motherboard combo.”
“That’s an extreme inventory cost hike, and may lead to less motherboard models being made and less stock being kept on hand,” he said. “There’s a lot of ramifications to it that we don’t have enough confirmed info to really evaluate properly yet, but I don’t think a soldered CPU would actually be quite as disruptive to the end user as to the companies in the supply chain.”
Comments are closed on this article
ChloeGreen22
December 16, 2012 at 2:20pm
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bdwoolman
December 13, 2012 at 3:02pm
Hmmm. Codenamed Broadwell. Perhaps after the Petraeus scandal they might want to change the codename. Then again? Maybe not.
whr4usa
December 13, 2012 at 10:14pm
what an unproductive comment; fitting for this useless rumormill story, I suppose?
adobepro
December 07, 2012 at 12:27pm
Would OEM's really want this? I mean, if a motherboard goes bad, the OEM would have to replace not just the MB, but the CPU too? That's a much bigger cost. Isn't cheaper to swap the MB and keep the existing CPU? I thought having FRU's was the ideal path for everyone, from manufacturing to support to the DIY end-user. What about MB vendors, like Gigabyte, Asus, etc...what's going to happen to them? Are they going to invest in configurations that they hope will sell as one unit now that there's no choice? Seems like it's going to get worse with this approach, like being forced into 16x9 displays that we no longer have a choice of getting 16x10 because not of innovation, but because it's simply cheaper, saving a few pennies with the market players all huddling up to convince us that we need 720/1080P resolutions at the same price as the 16x10 AR type (of course, they pocket the difference, no savings to us) At home, our computers are Desktop Workstations, not Playstations / TV sets; but that's a whole other topic. I really hope AMD improves and offers the much needed competition that we don't see in the CPU market to offset this direction. It will help when one company wants to stray in any direction it pleases regardless of it P/O its customer base simply because they can for whatever reason and there are no other real choices.
beta212
December 06, 2012 at 2:36pm
Foreseeable future = 1 year until they forget about this promise.
Nyarlathotep
December 06, 2012 at 12:52pm
I see this becoming more likely as more subsystems are integrated in the processor package. If this trend continues we will probably reach a point where the motherboard essentially just facilitates connections to peripherals. At that point there really is no reason to upgrade a CPU or motherboard separately. In addition to increasing the speed of subsystem interconnects this would also reduce the cost of manufacturing.
TheZomb
December 05, 2012 at 8:30pm
Then raspberry pie comparison to the NUC computing unit is interesting, but it seems like comparing a squirrel to a bear. A better comparison is something like the beagleboard xm which has a similar foot print and is also an ARM linux computer, but with a dual core processor and a lot more power and capability also closer to the price range of the NUC. The Raspberry pi and the NUC clearly aren't meant for the same market
whr4usa
December 05, 2012 at 8:13pm
I continue to be amazed by how some of the brightest fellow technical minds around (including MaxPC) continue to report rumors like these, despite us already knowing for certain no such thing can happen!! what do I mean by that..? Intel's well-documented and highly-predictable tick-tock;
- release new architecture with new socket
- shrink manufacturing process of existing architecture REQUIRING EXISTING SOCKET though usually involving new chipsets and faster memory
- release newer architecture with newer socket
- further shrink lithography of newer arch. in **same socket** etc.so if sandy and ivy bridges used 2011 and haswell is the tock around the corner then does anybody think there's a slight chance broadwell will require haswell's own socket..?
aarcane
December 05, 2012 at 7:58pm
I can guarantee first hand that BGA and sockets can coexist. It simply requires a different mechanism and a slight modification to your retention logic. I've removed and replaced a BGA "Chip" in a device and replaced it recently as part of a DIY repair. it was held in with a retention clip in a bracket. Sadly, I don't recall what the product was, or I would provide more details, but the point remains that BGA != soldered
bittertruth
December 05, 2012 at 7:20pm
Thank you Sir.
This is something I've never seen before.
But since my galaxy note 2 is also my PC with some extra adapter hanging to it, this box definitely looks neat, to what extent they're going to shrink it? Is nano technology running amok in PC world now? That thing looks amazing.
dc10ten
December 05, 2012 at 5:54pm
this is all fine and dandy for the cpu side of things
why have we never seen sockets for gpu's? think of how many iterations of GDDR3 and GDDR5 we have gone through or WILL go through in the last few generations of graphics cards. (i also submitted this question to the podcast)
gordonung
December 05, 2012 at 7:12pm
I'd guess it isn't done today (I can't say it's never been done) because the memory interface is a very important of GPU performance. They use very wide, very fast memory interfaces and need the fastest memory they can get to not be bottlenecked by the RAM. A socket might inhibit that, especially since they cut down the memory inteface for different models. Also, the GPU is very space constrained. Adding a socket to it would eat into the space, add complexity and cost to the design. One of the theories on why a BGA/PGA type setup for CPUs would not actually "hurt" that much is very few people ever upgrade or change their CPU. If you are running a Core 2 Quad and decide to upgrade to Core i7, you pass down the board with the processor. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but the vast majority of PC users don't take full advantage of the sockets they are given. However, the vast majority MPC readers and enthusiasts do take advantage of it.
vrmlbasic
December 06, 2012 at 3:45pm
My AMD system currently has a 990FX board in it. When I upgrade from my Phenom II to Piledriver I'll be recycling the board as AMD has yet to come out with a newer chipset for manufacturers to put into new boards AFAIK.
Since the only motherboard I could really buy would be identical to the one I have I see no point in doing so.
Point being, there's at least 1 more person around who will upgrade his CPU but not his motherboard, backing up that last sentence.
Though I'd expect this from the company that infamously tried to sell hardware that was artificially gimped and could be ungimped remotely by Intel to give the user an "upgrade".
ApathyCurve
December 06, 2012 at 9:35am
"If you are running a Core 2 Quad and decide to upgrade to Core i7, you pass down the board with the processor."
Which is why I consider this whole brouhaha pointless. I've been building systems for 20 years, and only once did I upgrade a CPU on an existing mobo. These days, I generally build a new gaming box every two years and a new box for my wife every three. On that kind of time scale, I will get a new mobo with the new chip anyway, because I'm jumping over a generation (or two) of CPU and memory.
I guess that means I'm not really an "enthusiast," doesn't it? I can live with that.
Nimrod
December 05, 2012 at 8:26pm
So the question no ones asking is this; why couldnt intel move to BGA on a dedicated board that then slaps into very high speed interface on the mobo similar to the P3? That would allow for the advantages of BGA and interchangeable procs at the same time would it not?
streetking
December 06, 2012 at 12:38pm
From what I gathered from these articles, the advantages of BGA are compactness and lower production costs. Wouldn't your suggestion effectively nullify the advantages?
Nimrod
December 06, 2012 at 5:19pm
no because thats not the advantage. The advantages is that it can be significantly faster when its soldiered directly to the same PCB that the CPU is on.
Led Weappelin
December 05, 2012 at 4:22pm
I fear the end of the socketed CPU from Intel and AMD is closer than they are letting us know. But I see the end of a socketed CPU creating a whole new market for a new company to cater to the gaming communities needs.
Strangelove_424
December 05, 2012 at 4:09pm
Sock it to me! … Get it? Socket to me… sock it to me… Ahhhhhh, shit, nevermind.
radioman70
December 05, 2012 at 3:39pm
Glad to see no BGA for the near future. HP's BGA on their graphics chips in the DV 2000,6000 and 9000 series laptops were a nightmare. Seriously a design flaw on their part, and they barely made any effort to make it right with customers. As a DIY enthusiast, I think it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the depth of the market their would be P-Oing.
renodude18
December 05, 2012 at 3:18pm
Its good to hear that they aren't going the BGA route after all just yet but the fact that they just said "...and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the foreseeable future for our customers and the Enthusiast DIY market", To me that doesn't sound like they are going to keep making new Socketed parts that they'll continue offering old socketed parts just not anything new except maybe in the server space where parts like that are a requirement in case of failure.
lindethier
December 05, 2012 at 6:45pm
That is what I got out of it as well. This would a horrifying direction for Intel to go in for system builders.
renodude18
December 06, 2012 at 8:23am
Yeah makes me wonder if I should go Intel or AMD for my next build in a few months.
