Rumour says Intel’s next CPU socket set to serve four generations

Rumour says Intel’s next CPU socket set to serve four generations

LGA1954 may bring the changes Intel needs to entice DIY desktop customers back into the fold.

Intel may soon change its old habits by at last providing a long-lasting platform to its customers. According to leaker Moore’s Law Is Dead (MILD) on YouTube, Team Blue could take a leaf from AMD’s playbook by releasing four CPU generations on the same LGA1954 socket. This platform longevity boost is also said to cover mobile solutions, meaning that laptop makers will need less effort to bring new chips to the market, potentially reducing prices.

The leaker’s sources indicate that the upcoming LGA1954 will support Nova Lake, Razer Lake, Titan Lake, and Hammer Lake architectures, marking a huge shift from the current two generations per socket cadence. This change will be more striking for those owning an LGA1851 platform, where Intel only released a single CPU generation. Boo hoo.

As a reminder, the LGA1851 socket was set to receive Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Arrow Lake Refresh, and perhaps even Panther Lake chips, but ended up getting only Arrow Lake in the form of the Core Ultra 200 CPU series. Though Arrow Lake Refresh is still rumoured, it’s not a true generational jump as it is unlikely to offer meaningful performance uplifts to Core Ultra 200 users. The previous LGA1700 was kind of okay, actually, by supporting 12th Gen (Alder Lake), 13th Gen (Raptor Lake), and 14th Gen (Raptor Lake Refresh), but far from AMD’s AM4 and AM5, which are planned for three true CPU generations, i.e. no refreshes.

If this rumour is correct, then Intel may finally beat AMD at its own game, possibly bringing back users who had had enough of swapping both the motherboard and CPU each time. Furthermore, according to MLID sources, Intel seems serious this time around, giving us hope to see this vision turn into reality.

We can safely say that when it comes to the DIY consumer market, Intel needs to up its game in the face of the recent AMD onslaught. So, in order to claim back its previous status as the leading brand, it needs a game-changing approach like this. Needless to say that these chips also have to be competitive both in price and performance. But, with up to 52 cores rumoured on the flagship Nova Lake CPUs, we are intrigued by future performance.

Better still, this should also have a positive impact for AMD users as Team Red will need to react to this reborn competition, possibly forcing an unexpected extension of the AM5 platform support. If not with AM5, AM6 will surely need to be equal or better, otherwise some will flock back to Intel. A win-win situation for all desktop users that we are eager to see.

Source: Rumour says Intel's next CPU socket set to serve four generations | Club386

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TSMC may manufacture the majority of Nova Lake CPUs as Intel 18A concerns grow

Nova Lake could see the debut of Intel’s 18A process node, but it’ll be up to TSMC to take care of higher-end SKUs.

It’s been almost three years since Raptor Lake, the last Intel architecture the company built wholly using its own process nodes. The brand’s at least partly relied on TSMC to manufacture its processors since, with a mantra of returning to homegrown CPUs in due time. Unfortunately, it seems Nova Lake may not be the homecoming we’ve been waiting for.

Following recent reports of poor Intel 18A yields, leaks have come to light that Team Blue may only use its latest process for one Nova Lake configuration. More worryingly for confidence in the node, we’re not talking high-end SKUs.

According to YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead (MLID), Intel is planning five core configurations for Nova Lake. The leaker claims that the four higher-end SKUs will use TSMC N2P, while Intel 18A will tackle entry-level SKUs.

MLID provides further details on the makeup of these configurations. They corroborate previous rumours of enormous core counts and the advent of 3D V-Cache challenger, bLLC.

Configuration Process
Flagship (16P+32E+4LPE, bLLC) TSMC N2P
Premium (8P+16E+4LPE, bLLC) TSMC N2P
Mainstream (8P+16E+4LPE) TSMC N2P
Budget (4P+8E+4LPE) TSMC N2P
Entry (4P+0E+4PLE) Intel 18A

To be fair to Intel, having at least one configuration with its own process node is an improvement over Arrow Lake. That current-generation architecture remains wholly TSMC-based, save for the base title made with Intel 16.

With that said, using Intel 18A for the bottom of the barrel SKUs doesn’t exactly instil confidence in the process. This is important, as the company’s CEO has made clear that nodes must attract external demand or risk the chop. If you want to attract customers, you don’t outsource the manufacturing of your own high-end processors.

Of course, the above remains rumour for the moment. Nova Lake likely won’t arrive on the scene until 2026 at the earliest, so it’ll be a while yet before we get an official word from Intel on the matter of manufacturing nodes.

However Nova Lake shapes up, it’ll need to go toe-to-toe with Zen 6. Intel has its work cut out for itself, as AMD is apparently targeting surprisingly high clock speeds in addition to bolstering core and cache.

Source: TSMC may manufacture the majority of Nova Lake CPUs as Intel 18A concerns grow | Club386

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