JPM - Open discussion on next gen CPUs please?

[John P. Myers]

I mentioned before that even though Haswell will be a new socket (1150) and sockets usually last 2 generations (meaning Broadwell would also use socket 1150), that it was unlikely they'd be compatible with each other due to Broadwell's multi-chip package design.

That no longer matters. Tick-tock is being abandoned. Word out now is that Haswell will be the final CPU from Intel that you can upgrade. Broadwell will use BGA packaging, meaning the CPU will be directly soldered to the motherboard. This has efficiency and heat benefits, but you can see how upgrading will require replacing the entire motherboard. How this will effect motherboard manufacturers and options included on motherboards is not yet known.

"Extreme" processors and Xeons are not expected to be effected.

[Fire$torm]

If AMD does not follow suite then Intel will have to rethink this strategy, as it could potentially cost them considerable market share.

Reason: Other then mass market consumers of HP & Dell products (and the like), users will not want to be tied into having to bare the cost of upgrading in that scenario. Many will move to AMD products. Plus the burden of delivering to market, while maintaining a viable profit, solutions that consumers find appealing, shifts completely to the MB makers. Only Intel can do that.

Funny thing is, Intel is the company primarily responsible in forging the upgrade ecosystem that now exists. And now to abandon it to this degree, is the equivalent of a giant middle finger to a good number of Intel's market partners... I'm sure they are all so excited by Intel's announcement. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the public arena.

Of course I could be totally off base. Time will tell.

[John P. Myers]

Intel Kills Off the Desktop

[Fire$torm]

So, it has begun....

I really can't believe Intel is this stupid. They only hold the majority market share because they catered to the enthusiast market and the trickle down effect this had on the mass market. It was gamers and the gamer segment that pushed the limits of PC tech for the masses, not the server market, not the IT market, nor any other market or combination of markets. So the question is, will AMD and the others step up to the plate?

This strategy of Intel's smacks of complete control. Control of the market, control of the masses and control of information. It is obvious that Intel thinks they are now invincible. That they can do as they please and the world will just fall in line. Case in point; If you think DRM is bad now, just wait and see what Intel has in store for the future. Intel wants to be the Key Master.

The truth is as long as the market refuses to concede, then there is hope that Intel will fail. Failure will force Intel to scuttle their plans or fold.

Again, time will tell.

[coronicus]

Intel Kills Off the Desktop

Time for amd to step it up and crush intel.. poor motherboard manufactorers i see allot of jobs lost over this.

[zombie67]

Intel Kills Off the Desktop

I must be missing something. I don't see that any of this article has anything to do will killing off desktop PCs.

PC makers will build the mobos with the CPU soldered on. They already do this for the mobile market, laptops and all-in-one PCs like the iMac.

I also don't see how this (necessarily) kills off 3rd party mobo manufacturers, like MSI/ASUS/etc. They can build their boards with the CPUs soldered on, just like they do all the other chips. Sure, it means more SKUs, or less selection.

It looks like apple may be going down the ARM path for it's desktops, and 64 bit coming soon. So I wonder what other PC manufacturers or mobo manufactures may be planning in that space. Crunchers with similar performance, but lower power consumption would be welcome!

[John P. Myers]

PC makers will build the mobos with the CPU soldered on.

PC makers do not make their own motherboards, with the exception of MSI, Asus, Samsung and Toshiba. Maybe a couple others. Point is, everyone else, such as Dell and HP, DO order the CPUs from Intel and stick them in a motherboard made by someone else. This way, they can pretend they have several different models available when it's the exact same motherboard with a slightly different CPU in it. These PC "makers" will no longer be ordering truckloads of CPUs.

They already do this for the mobile market, laptops and all-in-one PCs like the iMac.

Yes. All of which are not meant to upgraded. Desktops are. No one is going to post pics of their all-in-one bragging about what an awesome gaming machine they've got. As F$ said, it's the enthusiasts and gamers that drove everything to where it is now. Closer to home, every one of us here enjoys the hell out of upgrading. We talk about it every single day. Soldering CPUs to the motherboard takes this away from us because now instead of scratching up $300 for a nice high-end mainstream CPU, we also must spring for the nice high-end motherboard it's stuck to, greatly reducing the likelyhood anyone would bother. The constant buying/selling/trading of core components has driven this market for many years. Won't be quite so constant anymore.

I also don't see how this (necessarily) kills off 3rd party mobo manufacturers, like MSI/ASUS/etc. They can build their boards with the CPUs soldered on, just like they do all the other chips. Sure, it means more SKUs, or less selection.

Fear of unsellable inventory. When you make your own motherboard, the amount of money you have in it isn't very staggering. When you also are now buying shelves full of Intel chips to have on-hand to solder to the boards (which they have never had to do before), your investment is now at least tripled.

Also, Intel itself. They make motherboards too. Why sell CPUs to anyone at all when they can solder them all on theirselves? Now every other motherboard maker fights to stay alive since they can only make motherboards for AMD's jokes of processors. With any luck, maybe AMD will support PCIe 3.0 by 2014 when this all goes into effect :/

It looks like apple may be going down the ARM path for it's desktops, and 64 bit coming soon. So I wonder what other PC manufacturers or mobo manufactures may be planning in that space. Crunchers with similar performance, but lower power consumption would be welcome!

No thanks. Switching to ARM means a loss of performance. A large loss. What Apple is saying, is that they're hoping in a few years they will be "good enough" for desktops by 2017, similar to the way a Pentium I is still "good enough" to surf the internet with. In short, it'll never happen. The whole point of ARM is to allow for slimmer/thinner computers which defeats the purpose of putting one in a desktop, same as you won't find an Intel Atom on an ATX motherboard. And forget 2017, i bet Apple is no longer making desktops by 2015. Anyway, as much better as ARMs will be by 2017, how much better will CPUs be as well, also using less and less power? In order for an ARM to do what a CPU does, it would have to evolve to the point where it was no longer an ARM, other than in name. As they progress and as CPUs progress, ARMs will fade themselves from the market and be absorbed by CPUs.

AMD is moving to make these 64-bit ARMs, as is Samsung. Samsung has actually already made the BIG.little ARMs at 32bit, containing 2 quad-core clusters, each running at different speeds. AMD just now coming into the ARM market is a mistake if they're hoping to do anything in the desktop market. ARMs will be great for servers, but only because you can pile thousands of them together cheaply with little heat to accomplish something. 1 chip by itself in a desktop though...ugh.

[zombie67]

PC makers do not make their own motherboards, with the exception of MSI, Asus, Samsung and Toshiba. Maybe a couple others. Point is, everyone else, such as Dell and HP, DO order the CPUs from Intel and stick them in a motherboard made by someone else. This way, they can pretend they have several different models available when it's the exact same motherboard with a slightly different CPU in it. These PC "makers" will no longer be ordering truckloads of CPUs.

Dell (for example) makes their own motherboards. I mean, they may sub-contract it to an External Manufacturer like foxconn, celestica, etc. But the point is that they are not buying off-the-shelf mobos and putting CPUs on them. And they have the EMs install the CPUs and test the mobo assemblies as a full unit already. So the only difference is the CPU mounting method for the EM. Also, the same number of CPUs will be bought. No reason the quantity will change. They will just be BGA (or whatever) rather than socketed.

Yes. All of which are not meant to upgraded. Desktops are. No one is going to post pics of their all-in-one bragging about what an awesome gaming machine they've got. As F$ said, it's the enthusiasts and gamers that drove everything to where it is now. Closer to home, every one of us here enjoys the hell out of upgrading. We talk about it every single day. Soldering CPUs to the motherboard takes this away from us because now instead of scratching up $300 for a nice high-end mainstream CPU, we also must spring for the nice high-end motherboard it's stuck to, greatly reducing the likelyhood anyone would bother. The constant buying/selling/trading of core components has driven this market for many years. Won't be quite so constant anymore.

Enthusiast home-built PCs are are very very small fraction of PCs built. Almost no PCs ever have their CPUs upgraded. Statistically, it's just a rounding error. Those high-end components have a nice fat margin, but do not drive the a very large part of the over-all profit.

Fear of unsellable inventory. When you make your own motherboard, the amount of money you have in it isn't very staggering. When you also are now buying shelves full of Intel chips to have on-hand to solder to the boards (which they have never had to do before), your investment is now at least tripled.

...as is your selling price and profit. Sure, it is more money temporarily tied up in inventory. And that may very well mean some of the smaller companies can't make it. It happens. On the other hand, as an OEM mobo designer, knowing the CPU that will be mounted on a board is a HUGE advantage. No need to make it universal for all CPUs that may fit the socket. Now you can customize it for exactly a specific CPU, and the likely buyer for that CPU. No need to over build (and over spend) a board if you are putting a lesser CPU on it.

Also, Intel itself. They make motherboards too. Why sell CPUs to anyone at all when they can solder them all on theirselves? Now every other motherboard maker fights to stay alive since they can only make motherboards for AMD's jokes of processors. With any luck, maybe AMD will support PCIe 3.0 by 2014 when this all goes into effect :/

They could decide *today*, with socketed CPUs, not to sell the CPUs to anyone. You want intel? Then you buy intel mobo+CPU combos. The mounting method change doesn't change this issue.

No thanks. Switching to ARM means a loss of performance. A large loss. What Apple is saying, is that they're hoping in a few years they will be "good enough" for desktops by 2017, similar to the way a Pentium I is still "good enough" to surf the internet with. In short, it'll never happen. The whole point of ARM is to allow for slimmer/thinner computers which defeats the purpose of putting one in a desktop, same as you won't find an Intel Atom on an ATX motherboard. And forget 2017, i bet Apple is no longer making desktops by 2015. Anyway, as much better as ARMs will be by 2017, how much better will CPUs be as well, also using less and less power? In order for an ARM to do what a CPU does, it would have to evolve to the point where it was no longer an ARM, other than in name. As they progress and as CPUs progress, ARMs will fade themselves from the market and be absorbed by CPUs.

AMD is moving to make these 64-bit ARMs, as is Samsung. Samsung has actually already made the BIG.little ARMs at 32bit, containing 2 quad-core clusters, each running at different speeds. AMD just now coming into the ARM market is a mistake if they're hoping to do anything in the desktop market. ARMs will be great for servers, but only because you can pile thousands of them together cheaply with little heat to accomplish something. 1 chip by itself in a desktop though...ugh.

I am optimistic about the performance curve of ARM, and other similar low power CPUs, over time. We'll see.

But getting back to my original point: What does this have to do with the desktop dying? Even if the enthusiast market shrinks or dies, that is just a small slice of the PC market. Does desktop maybe mean something I don't know? Is "desktop" a slang term for "gaming" or something?

[John P. Myers]

But getting back to my original point: What does this have to do with the desktop dying? Even if the enthusiast market shrinks or dies, that is just a small slice of the PC market. Does desktop maybe mean something I don't know?

Not really, but the way it was used in that article "Desktop" meant "Desktops as we know them" or "Desktops: in the sense of what we've come to expect from them". Obviously there will still be desktops with soldered CPUs.

Dell (for example) makes their own motherboards. I mean, they may sub-contract it to an External Manufacturer like foxconn, celestica, etc. But the point is that they are not buying off-the-shelf mobos and putting CPUs on them. And they have the EMs install the CPUs and test the mobo assemblies as a full unit already. So the only difference is the CPU mounting method for the EM. Also, the same number of CPUs will be bought. No reason the quantity will change. They will just be BGA (or whatever) rather than socketed.

No, they don't buy boards off a shelf. The boards they buy are specifically made for them. Yes. But what happens is, now every motherboard maker has to buy the chips instead. This will reduce quantity discounts as the purchases are more spread out and likely more choppy, preferring to under-order and place a new order when they need them for safety rather than have Intel send in an 18-wheeler full as they do now (metaphorically, of course).

The motherboard manufacturers will be the ones soldering these CPUs to their boards now. Companies like Dell and HP won't. Why spend $1mil+ on the equipment to do it? I don't really know what it costs, but it's extremely high. It's also different to soldering the chips that are already soldered, so there may even be some motherboard manufacturers who can't spring for this tech. The difference is, regular chips all have their connection pins around the perimeter of the chip. You can physically get to them. In BGA, this isn't the case. Both chips that make up Broadwell's multi-chip design are mounted to a board, as they are now, just larger. Then this board containing the 2 chips has to be soldered to the motherboard. How would you do that cheaply and have the capacity to do thousands per day? Thousands of points to be soldered, all on a plane in-between the chips and the motherboard. How many pins can you reach with a soldering gun? Not a single one because it fits flush to the board. How do you not mistakenly bridge 2 pins together that are less than 0.75mm apart? Very tricky.

Almost no PCs ever have their CPUs upgraded.

Not true. Corporations upgrade their CPUs all the time by the hundreds or thousands. You can see this on eBay and Amazon. Sometimes they will try to sell off large lots of their old used CPUs. Yes, enthusiasts make up a small amount of the market, but it's not only enthusiasts that make simple CPU upgrades. Average Joe consumer has been known to take their computer to a shop and have them upgrade the CPU, or have their geek nephew do it None of these online computer parts places could survive off of enthusiasts alone. Millions of average people do in fact upgrade their computers, they just aren't considered "enthusiasts".

Also remember millions of PCs are bought online or from local shops that customize computers. Tell them what you want, they buy the parts and assemble it. These are also not "enthusiasts". But with soldered CPUs, the customization isn't as customizable as it is now. Minor issue? Maybe. We'll see.

Then there are the multitudes of people that fry their CPUs and motherboards. Overheating, electrical surges, PCIe slot goes bad, whatever. Why do you now have to pay to replace your CPU when your motherboard dies? Why do you now have to pay to replace your motherboard when the CPU dies? Unacceptable.

They could decide *today*, with socketed CPUs, not to sell the CPUs to anyone. You want intel? Then you buy intel mobo+CPU combos. The mounting method change doesn't change this issue.

Of course it changes the issue. With just a socket, anyone can pop their old CPU out and sell it, and buy another one from someone else who did the same. Point is, Intel could never control that, and they've made billions by *not* doing that. And they really didn't want to anyway. It's just more of a headache.

From my post about this a few days before this article was written, i said it wasn't expected to effect the "Extreme" CPUs. What i meant by that was i didn't think Intel would solder whatever replaces socket 2011 (which is also socket 2011, but called different things depending who you ask). This article seems to imply everything Broadwell will be soldered, even Broadwell-E. I still doubt it, but if they did, that is why they see enthusiasts being killed off, because most enthusiasts don't use socket 2011, even though they're more powerful, because of the disproportionate price Intel charges. Same with Xeons. An extra 0.1GHz is not worth $400 more.

I do admit i'd like to see a reduction in the number of different CPUs available. Between the low- and high-end, there's just way too much filler. Chips that would never be used if it weren't for OEM. Same goes for motherboards. There are just too many. Not too many brands, just too many models. And while i'm complaining, there's too many different cases as well.

I'd love to see each of these reduced by 15% or so. But it goes to prove a point: all of this useless (to me) junk exists because it can. Because the market is strong enough to allow it to exist. And next to none of this is being bought by enthusiasts. It's all being bought by average Joe.

[zombie67]

No, they don't buy boards off a shelf. The boards they buy are specifically made for them. Yes. But what happens is, now every motherboard maker has to buy the chips instead. This will reduce quantity discounts as the purchases are more spread out and likely more choppy, preferring to under-order and place a new order when they need them for safety rather than have Intel send in an 18-wheeler full as they do now (metaphorically, of course).

I am not clear who you are talking about for many of your points. Are you talking about EMs for computer suppliers (like foxconn) or the specialty market mobo suppliers like GIGABYTE or EVGA? Because it makes a difference. If you are talking about EMs for folks like Dell, then they are already buying all the CPUs today, just in socketed form. Same discounts, same everything. It's all just part of the component cost to the customer. Often a major customer like Dell will negotiate the cost of the major components directly with the component suppliers, and then pass that on to the EMs. There is no change to the model when the desktop platforms move to BGA. Many mobos have other BGA components on them anyway. The CPU is just one more. If you are talking about specialty market mobo suppliers, well then like I said, they are going to have higher expenses and higher revenue. Can they make it work? Maybe. I'm sure it will depend on the individual companies, and the decisions they make.

The motherboard manufacturers will be the ones soldering these CPUs to their boards now. Companies like Dell and HP won't. Why spend $1mil+ on the equipment to do it? I don't really know what it costs, but it's extremely high. It's also different to soldering the chips that are already soldered, so there may even be some motherboard manufacturers who can't spring for this tech. The difference is, regular chips all have their connection pins around the perimeter of the chip. You can physically get to them. In BGA, this isn't the case. Both chips that make up Broadwell's multi-chip design are mounted to a board, as they are now, just larger. Then this board containing the 2 chips has to be soldered to the motherboard. How would you do that cheaply and have the capacity to do thousands per day? Thousands of points to be soldered, all on a plane in-between the chips and the motherboard. How many pins can you reach with a soldering gun? Not a single one because it fits flush to the board. How do you not mistakenly bridge 2 pins together that are less than 0.75mm apart? Very tricky.

Again, I am wondering if you are mixing the two different models? For the major EM such as foxconn, they already have plenty of the equipment to do the BGA stuff. BGA is a basic requirement for any computer company to even consider an EM as a supplier. If you are talking about the specialty market mobo suppliers, then yeah, they may have equipment investments to make.

Not true. Corporations upgrade their CPUs all the time by the hundreds or thousands. You can see this on eBay and Amazon. Sometimes they will try to sell off large lots of their old used CPUs. Yes, enthusiasts make up a small amount of the market, but it's not only enthusiasts that make simple CPU upgrades. Average Joe consumer has been known to take their computer to a shop and have them upgrade the CPU, or have their geek nephew do it None of these online computer parts places could survive off of enthusiasts alone. Millions of average people do in fact upgrade their computers, they just aren't considered "enthusiasts".

Also remember millions of PCs are bought online or from local shops that customize computers. Tell them what you want, they buy the parts and assemble it. These are also not "enthusiasts". But with soldered CPUs, the customization isn't as customizable as it is now. Minor issue? Maybe. We'll see.

Then there are the multitudes of people that fry their CPUs and motherboards. Overheating, electrical surges, PCIe slot goes bad, whatever. Why do you now have to pay to replace your CPU when your motherboard dies? Why do you now have to pay to replace your motherboard when the CPU dies? Unacceptable.

Even so, even including corporate upgrades, that is still a micro slice of the CPU pie. It's just cheaper to replace a vanilla box, when you factor in all the overhead. Particularly in massive data farms (google, amazon, etc). The numbers are staggering.

Of course it changes the issue. With just a socket, anyone can pop their old CPU out and sell it, and buy another one from someone else who did the same. Point is, Intel could never control that, and they've made billions by *not* doing that. And they really didn't want to anyway. It's just more of a headache.

I wasn't clear. I meant from Intel's perspective. They could monopolize/silo the (intel) market, not sell CPUs to anyone, and force people to buy stuffed mobos from Intel today if they wanted. No direct attach needed. The attach method has nothing to do with it. It's all about what business does Intel want to be in, and maybe that is changing.

For what it's worth, my job is managing PCBA and computer manufacturing at major EMs.