Processors Alder Lake they bring several major changes that require a new socket. In addition, this time the change can be considered more than justified (not as in the era of 14nm processors, when nothing changed on the buses and yet every second row – although still with the same architecture – changed the socket, perhaps so as not to reduce chipset sales). Alder Lake it will bring support for DDR5 memory and support for PCIe 5.0. In addition, it has been announced that the socket will last more than two generations of products, so it must be equipped in the future, from a perspective Alder Lake to some extent oversized to be – as they say – future proof.
This is where the inconsistency is supposed to come from Alder Lake Equipped with 1700 contacts (LGA1700), the socket itself carries exactly 1800 and could justifiably be called LGA1800. Whether he will need these extra contacts already Raptor Lake (=Alder Lake with tuned large cores and twice small cores) or up to Meteor Lake (chipsets / tiles on 7nm / Intel 4 process) is not yet known. If any information appears in this direction, it is more speculation.
In addition, contacts could be related to the simple fact that they are Alder Lake will offer PCIe 5.0, support will be relatively limited, as the 5.0 generation will be equipped with only the primary 16 lines that will fit on the primary PCIe × 16 slot in regular boards (or they will probably be split by eight between the two PCIe slots, but such a configuration will CrossFire / SLI negligible in terms of representation). However, there is no doubt that this situation is not definitive for Intel and the next generation (Raptor Lake or Meteor Lake) will increase the number of PCIe 5.0 lines. In addition, contacts could be a reserve for their implementation.
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