Leaked Pictures of Socket F

Robbedoeske writes "Dutch language site Tweakers.net has the first pictures of AMD's Socket F, aka Socket 1207. This socket introduces support for DDR 2 memory and some say it will offer the ability for a integrated PCI Express controller on the cpu. Socket F is meant to be used in systems with more than one Opteron cpu."

PGA

[theantipop]

If true, it is interesting to see AMD moving to pin grid array-style cpu connection. Intel has used this for a little while now with thier socket 775 Pentium 4 chips. While there was concern over broken pins resulting in unusable motherboards, it now seems to be a relatively robust mechanism. I wonder what advantages AMD saw that lead them to this design. I also wonder if their Socket M, 940 pin solution for next years Athlons will use the same socket design.

next step?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I never imagined integrating a PCI Express controller in a CPU. If this trend of intregation continues, what would be the next logical step?

.nyud.net:8090 images

[TomasDK]

The images:

http://img259.imageshack.us.nyud.net:8090/my.php?i mage=0015ep.jpg [nyud.net] http://img259.imageshack.us.nyud.net:8090/my.php?i mage=0024yp.jpg [nyud.net] http://img259.imageshack.us.nyud.net:8090/my.php?i mage=0032cd.jpg [nyud.net]

Just in case

Yet another socket

[Cerberus7]

Yay. I'm still on the fence if all of these different sockets are a good thing or not. I've gone from Socket 7 to Super Socket 7 to Socket A over the course of the last several years. Now it seems that there are way too many different sockets to choose from, and who knows which will show the same kind of longevity that my past choices have. What's a guy to do?

Re:next step?

[pla]

Personally I never imagined integrating a PCI Express controller in a CPU. If this trend of intregation continues, what would be the next logical step?

Single-chip computers - A CPU, and a totally passive backplane that does nothing but provide real-estate for connectors. And most likely, you wouldn't strictly need any extra cards, with a decent (but not high end, thus the need for a bus at all) GPU included right on-die.

Realistically, I expect two-chip computers as far more likely. Something along the lines of having your CPU plug directly into your video card, which has the standard video card parts on one side, and standard motherboard connectors on the other. And the whole thing could mount via a SECC-style connector to a power bus, right inside something just a tad bigger than current ATX power supplies.

Drives? Uhhh... I'll have to think about that one. ;-)

Looks fake to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Err... am I the only one who thinks that the perspective on the two "halves" of the socket is completely wrong? Take a good look at the angle at which the pins on the left hand side of the 3rd image appear to be sticking up - and then compare it to the last row of the right hand side.

The whole pin area looks too "flat" as well...

Re:FB-DIMM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the readable translation.

I wonder why AMD isn't just skipping DDR2 and going straight to FB-DIMM?

Maybe FB-DIMM will only be for really big 4+ CPU systems? Maybe FB-DIMM negates advantages of integrated memory controller?

Re:AMD Beating The Crap Out Of Intel?

[MarkScott65]

Since when did technical superiority have anything to do with market dominance????

Re:AMD Beating The Crap Out Of Intel?

[Kjella]

How the hell can AMD be making such better chips and companies like Dell still selling Intel powered crap?

Quite easy when you realize that that majority of consumers don't actually use the full capacity of their CPU very often. If you look at games the GPU is far more important than the CPU, which leaves heavy CPU use to media encoders, compilers and scientic processing. That's not really a big share of the market.

Civ4 mins: 1.2 GHz or equivalent
SW Battlefront II mins: 1.5 GHz or equivalent
Call of Duty II mins: Pentium IV 1.4GHz or AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz or equivalent
Age of Empires III: 1.4 GHz equivalent or higher processor or equivalent
F.E.A.R. mins: Pentium(R) 4 - 1.7 GHz or equivalent
Sims 2: 800 MHz processor or equivalent
Quake 4: 2.0 Ghz or equivalent

Those are some of the latest games released. PIV 2.0GHz was shipping in june 2002, so they are over three years behind the state of the art. And games are normally the most intense apps a user has. Basicly, an Intel machine does pretty much everything a computer user wants to do, so does an AMD. The rest is simply mindshare and momentum. Intel can drop their prices at any time if the market is slipping. They are simply balancing out taking out extra profit versus the threat AMD poses. If they don't watch out, they'll take a spanking in the professional market though, where admins are much more aware of what they're buying...

Re:Yes, he counted them

[FST777]

Allright, for the fun of it:

At our forum, Gathering of Tweakers, the first pictures of AMD's Socket F have emerged. In may we wrote in that AMD has set a new CPU-socket on their roadmap. The new socket would have 1207 connection point and would be meant for multi-Opteron servers. To prevent that a CPU with support for DDR-memory is placed on a DDR2-socket and vice-versa, a new socket was needed. The extra pins which are available with this step are rumored to be used for an integrated PCI Epress-controller on the CPU. Noticable on the pictures is the clear separation in the middle of the socket. This seems to point out that each core of the dual-core Opteron gets its own group of contact-point and is truly treated as a separate CPU.

The pictures further show that Socket F, like Intels Socket 775, is bestowed the pins that contact the CPU. The CPU will not be put inside the socket, but this is a so-called LGA-socket. Socket F is by the way also called Socket 1207, but like Socket 479 only has 478 pins this model only has 1206, as shown by punctual counting. This socket also supports registered DDR II 533-, 667- and 800-memory and by doing so AMD ventures the competition with Intels FB DIMM plans. The latter wil introduce its dual-core platform dubbed Dempsey coming april, with among other thingsthe Greencreek chipset with support for FB DIMM-memory.

Even the dutch text was badly written, so excuses for the grammar and spelling. It's always hard to translate anything other than your own thoughts ;)