Tuesday, May 5th 2020
Intel's next LGA1700 Socket to Last Over Two Generations
The upcoming LGA1700 socket by Intel, which makes its debut with 12th generation Core "Alder Lake-S" desktop processors, could be the first in over a decade from the company, to support more than two processor generations. Intel has maintained streak of ensuring that a mainstream desktop CPU socket won't be compatible with more than two generations of Core processors. Controversy brew when the company artificially segmented the LGA1151 socket between the 6th, 7th, and 8th and 9th processor generations, with the latter two requiring a 300-series chipset motherboard and the former two not working on the newer chipset, even though all four generations are pin-compatible, and modders have been able to get the newer chips to work on older 100-series and 200-series motherboards with great success.
According to a NotebookCheck report, Intel is designing the LGA1700 socket to support at least three future generations of Core processors (that's "Alder Lake-S" and two of its successors). This should give the platform a degree of longevity as it introduces several new computing concepts to the client desktop form-factor, such as heterogenous CPU cores. "Alder Lake-S" combines 8 each of low-power "Gracemont" and high performance "Golden Cove" CPU cores in a setup rivaling the Arm big.LITTLE, where light computing workloads and system idling are completely handled by the low-power cores, while the high-performance cores are only woken up from their power-gated slumber as needed, before being put back to sleep when they're not.
Source:
NotebookCheck
According to a NotebookCheck report, Intel is designing the LGA1700 socket to support at least three future generations of Core processors (that's "Alder Lake-S" and two of its successors). This should give the platform a degree of longevity as it introduces several new computing concepts to the client desktop form-factor, such as heterogenous CPU cores. "Alder Lake-S" combines 8 each of low-power "Gracemont" and high performance "Golden Cove" CPU cores in a setup rivaling the Arm big.LITTLE, where light computing workloads and system idling are completely handled by the low-power cores, while the high-performance cores are only woken up from their power-gated slumber as needed, before being put back to sleep when they're not.
30 Comments on Intel's next LGA1700 Socket to Last Over Two Generations
/sarcasm
Having the same socket does not mean it supports the new CPU that Intel releases. The current 1151 is a good example where its the same socket, but Intel simply did not want to enable older 1 and 2 series chipsets to work with the newer CPUs. Instead they forced people to upgrade to the newer 3xx series chipset in order to use the 8th gen CPUs. Unless there is a money back guarantee from Intel, I don't think anyone should be attracted to this unverified future support.
I don't understand the headline of the article. Since when did Intel ever support more than two generations on one plattform? Only if you strictly count sockets and CPU-generations, then yes, LGA775 has had Prescott, Smithfield, Cedar Mill, Presler, Conroe, Kentisfield, Wolfdale and Yorkfield.
But strictly speaking, Intel never has supported more than two generations on any plattform, most of the time only one. The first LGA775-Boards with i915P/i925X only supported Prescott, even FSB1066 needed an updated Chipset (i925XE). i945P/i955X/i975X supported all remaining Netburst CPUs from Smithfield onwards, but thats really only two genereations aswell. The first Core 2-boards with P965/i975X officially only support Conroe and Kentisfield with FSB1066, FSB1333 and 45nm officially needed P35/X38. But while there are lots of good P965-boards which support all Core 2 with OCing, that again is really only two generations.
Finally, LGA1156 is only two generations because Lynnfield and Clarkdale were produced on a different process and only the later had an IGP, but they were two parts of the same portfolio.
Followed by newer 94x/96x series that added support for Core CPUs.
PGQ3x and PGQ4x dropped official support for Pentium 4 but some/most (DDR2) boards supprted them anyway.
This covers the span of entire Core 2 line (IIRC, 3 generations?) plus a little of Pentium 4 (Prescott, Gallatin).
I bet this clusterfuck is why Intel adopted the idea of 2 generations per platform. The previous socket 478 was not great with compatibility either.Core Duo was mobile only. Yonah, if my memory serves right. Mobile 478 socket.
EDIT: @londiste : Nope, i845/865 was originally Socket 478, LGA775 launched with i915P/i925P and PCIe. Some boards with i800-Series Chipsets were made as cheap and AGP-compatible alternatives.
As I said, i915P/i925X(E) was Prescott only, Smithfield run only on i945P/i955X onwards. The first set of i975X was a refresh of i955X with Crossfire-support. First-generation Core 2 Duo run on P965 and some refreshed i975X only.
Of course, since socket and chipset are two different things, every Chipset with quadpumped-FSB can support any CPU with a matching quadpumped-FSB. This is why i800-Series on LGA775 was possible, as well as i915P on Socket 478. There were some refreshed lowcost-Chipsets with an older featureset on newer plattforms too, like i945GZ/GC/i946GZ/PL, and there might be some some refreshed i945P which support Core 2 Duo, too, but officially, i945P didn't support Core 2 Duo and the original lineup of mainboards certaintly didn't.
This was even easier on newer plattforms without FSB and was very prevalent on socket AM3(+), with loads of cheap nForce520/GeForce6150/nForce630a/GeForce7050-boards, that even lacked HT3.0 an PCIe2.0, but HT1.0 was enough even with Bulldozer.
On Intel I haven't seen such a board for a long time since it doesn't make any sense because Intel always has a cheap chipset in it's portfolio and there is little enough progress featurewise as it is. The last I saw was a P67-Board with LGA1156 form Asrock.
What is PGQ3x and PGQ4x btw?
Ice Lake
Cannon Lake
Commet Lake
Tiger Lake
Cooper Lake
Alder Lake
Rocket Lake
Meteor Lake
Lakefield
Willow Cove
Golden Cove
Snow Ridge
Tremont
Saphire Rapids
Granite Rapids
Remember, when there was one big architecture for Desktop, Server and Mobile and another smaller (Atom) for low power devices??
Sorry, but it seems like they want us to loose overview on these.
Lets have a look what AMD is coming up with:
Zen3
Zen4
Both will also come for Desktop, Mobile, Embeddet and APUs, Ok, that I can remember!
Zen 3 based Cezanne is an APU.
Zen 3 based Vermeer is a desktop CPU.
Zen 3 based Milan is a server CPU.
Zen 4 based Genoa is a server CPU.
Willow Cove and Golden Cove are microarchitectures not products.
With worldwide quarantine I doubt it is possible or even financially viable to release 2 generations of processors in a span of <18 months for an already buried platform.
1700 may be a new 1155, but that makes 1200 a repeat of failed 1156.
Well done AMD
How about Banded Kestrel, Castle Peak, Colfax, Great Horned Owl, Snowy Owl or Whitehaven? :)
Generally, codenames themselves are not that important, the SKUs on sale will have different names anyway. If you want to follow the news on in-production and planned hardware, having some idea of the codenames just comes with the territory.
Some of the confusion in Intel lineup is because their server, desktop and mobile architectures do not align. The rest is due to all the 14nm updates they have been doing due to both 10nm being MIA as well as hardware fixes to security issues.
- Server: Skylake > Cascade Lake > Cooper Lake > Ice Lake > Sapphire Rapids > Granite Rapids > Diamond Rapids
- Desktop: Skylake > Kaby Lake > Coffee Lake > Coffee Lake Refresh > Comet Lake > Rocket Lake > Alder Lake > Meteor Lake
- Mobile: Skylake > Kaby Lake > Cannon Lake\Coffee Lake\Whiskey Lake > Ice Lake\Comet Lake > Tiger Lake\Rocket Lake > Alder Lake > Meteor Lake
The core architecture codenames have come into play for two reasons - all the 10nm drama, as well as Intel's apparent plan to do heterogeneous CPUs, where architecture of specific cores becomes important. Before this, code codename is/was usually the same as the CPU one.
- Mainline cores: Skylake > Palm Cove (in Cannon Lake) > Sunny Cove (in Ice Lake) > Willow Cove (Tiger Lake, Sapphire Rapids) > Golden Cove (probably Alder Lake and Granite Rapids), Ocean Cove (probably in Meteor Lake and Diamond Rapids).
There are other cores that are rumored to come into play soon, notably Tremont cores from Atom line into Alder Lake is the most known example.
From your list, Snow Ridge is the current Atom line with Tremont cores.
That's why you can't say that the socket will support three generations, if one of the CPU's are completely different.
Lets say Intel added Atom support to to LGA 1155 back in the day, does that mean that LGA 1155 supports three generations? No, because they're not in the same series to begin with.
And yes, I do think Alder Lake will be much better performing than Atom.
There should be no PCH on the motherboard at all, PCH is stupid, costs $50 and bloats the price needlessly.