Intel to continue making socketed CPUs for “foreseeable future”

by Mark Tyson on 6 December 2012, 11:30

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), AMD (NYSE:AMD), PC

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Recently we covered a news rumour emanating from Japan about Intel discontinuing support for socketed CPUs. It turns out that it was a tsunami in a tea-cup, as Haswell isn’t going to be Intel’s last range of swappable CPUs. This comes from the horse’s mouth, via an email from an Intel spokesman to Maximum PC.

Intel’s email

The rumour that Intel PCs would move to soldered on BGA CPUs only, following the Haswell line of chips, has been scotched. In an email, Intel spokesman Daniel Snyder told Maximum PC that “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”. Snyder ended his comment with a “however” statement, he wrote  “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 is reassuring but ultimately non-committal, but how far ahead can you expect a commercial enterprise to make commitments for? Businesses are there to make money, not merely to keep promises beyond that of a product guarantee or contractual agreement.

AMD’s email

AMD piped up following the Intel socket abandonment rumour to say, in an email to ZDNet, that it remained committed to socketed processors. ZDNet talked about how such an upgrade path removal would be bad for the industry and another nail in the desktop PC market “Modularity made the desktop PC, and removing this key feature will bring this to a close” opined ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes in his conclusion.

AMD’s statement of reassurance read “We have no plans at this time to move to BGA [ball-grid array] only packaging and look forward to continuing to support this critical segment of the market”. AMD said it had “a long history of supporting the do-it-yourself and enthusiast desktop market with socketed CPUs and APUs that are compatible with a wide range of motherboard products from our partners”. Also the company promised supplies of socketable CPUs through 2013 and 2014 with the “Kaveri” APU and FX CPU lines. That’s as far as it could be reasonably expected to commit.

Miniaturisation

With all our computing devices generally getting smaller, thinner and lighter there are proportionally fewer upgradeable CPUs around. Having upgradable and exchangeable standard parts takes up more room in a device. As computing on the desktop’s popularity declines the socketable CPU market could go with it. It looks as though the desktop PC’s CPU upgrade capability is safe until 2015, but what the computing landscape looks like by then, we shall have to wait and see.



HEXUS Forums :: 17 Comments

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Wow, surprise… not. Of course they won't get rid of socketed CPUs, and the rumour roadmap doesn't really suggest that unless you want it to. It's possible they may offer more integrated solutions like NUC and others may start to offer more high end integrated boards (especially slim ITX as that would be a great idea, there's already integrated Atom boards), in time socketed may become an expensive enthusiast option, but they won't disappear for a good long time yet - CPUs are becoming more disposable but not THAT disposable.
Didn't think it was currently a flyer.

It would just be an incentive to NOT upgrade your CPU (or even mobo, Intel makes money on chipsets as well as CPUs) as the associated cost would put a lot of people off.
shaithis
Didn't think it was currently a flyer.

It would just be an incentive to NOT upgrade your CPU (or even mobo, Intel makes money on chipsets as well as CPUs) as the associated cost would put a lot of people off.

In a minor way yes. However, these things are future plans more than “make as much as you can now” plans. I have read and watched a number of articles/shows regarding this rumour of Intel moving away from sockets. Was shocked and angry when I first heard this but.. Now it does make sence. The way we (PC users) lost ground in recent years was because consoles are simple, don't need any upgrades and are standardised and optimised. Tablets and smartphones are heading this direction too. We need same thing to happen on PC. Its not 80s anymore and most of us don't want to assemble PCs anyway (enthusiasts are minority unfortunately). Besides, MB and CPU are only few parts that are in the case - there is GPU, RAM, SSD/HDD, Audio, BL drives, Chasis, PSU etc.

To sum it all up - the sooner we move to soldered in CPUs the better. Might be a bit of shock in short term but most will benefit in long run anyway. MB are becoming less and less responsible for processing since most parts are moving onto CPU package. Soldering on will make sence eventually. And there still will be lots of choice hardware and software wise (provided Microsoft will listen to its audience).
edvinasm
MB are becoming less and less responsible for processing since most parts are moving onto CPU package. Soldering on will make sense eventually.

You're right, I think it will happen more and as I said in the original rumour thread I think it is more like extending the CPU package to encompass the whole motherboard which is now little more than sockets, power smoothing and an I/O controller.

I don't think sockets need to or will die completely for a long time though, that flexibility is still needed and desired - it may well start to become the more expensive option though whilst fully integrated solutions become the mass market option… even that is years away IMHO.
Yeah I also saw it as a poor interpretation TBH, especially when I found some comments on a article with a proper translation vs Google Translate which most seem to have used. At least this is a bit of reassurance amongst all the doomsaying of late. Nice to see AMD and Intel are starting to give some response to rumours to stop some random site posting whatever they like and have everyone else jump on it as pure fact…

@edvinasm: Despite ‘a number’ of articles publishing this, believe it or not they all lead back to the same questionable source, with some more open about that than others.

I still disagree about ‘the sooner we move to soldered CPUs, the better’ as I probably said more than a few times in the last thread. Maybe at some point it will make sense even to enthusiasts, but currently there's no advantage to anyone but Intel, it's not all about lack of upgrades either.

Edit:@potnoodle: That's basically what motherboards have always been, integrating common parts to the CPU doesn't really change anything; the chipset was generally made by the same company as the CPU anyway. There remains a lot of differentiation between high and low end motherboards for a given socket.