4 ms·

AMD was sooo close to having a perfect 4096 socket. SO CLOSE! But, alas, it was not meant to be.

by tscs37 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ant6n 9y ago
Missing corner pins means you won't accidentally insert it the wrong way.
- tscs37 9y ago
  What about a socket that is like USB-C, there is no wrong way to insert it. Though I imagine such a socket would be an insane task to complete and have numerous problems with latency and speed.
  - GlitchMr 9y ago
    Waste of pins. You would need to quadruple number of pins or so (with a square shape, it may be worth to just have rectangular to just double). It is possible, fairly sure, but not really practical.
    - wccrawford 9y ago
      Or maybe only double the pins, if you no longer make it square. But you're right, it's a waste of time and money.
      - zokier 9y ago
        Couldn't you hypothetically design the pinout to be suitably symmetrical to avoid major part of the wasted pins. For example if the chip has 4 memory channels, then lay out the memory pins identically but rotated in each quadrant. Same principle should apply to other major pin count consumers (pcie lanes, power/ground pins), which leaves somewhat small area that needs to be duplicated/quadrupled. Of course implementing such design would be ridiculously complicated with very little benefit. But it would be pretty cool though :)
  - SmellTheGlove 9y ago
    Engineering a socket like that has to be a low priority. It's not as though people are reseating their CPUs every day, and generally speaking, the people that do it can handle aligning it properly.
    - solotronics 9y ago
      I helped a friend build a computer back in school and when he got the parts in the mail he hurriedly started building (against my advice to wait until I got there) he put the CPU in the wrong way and bent some of the pins. So it does happen more than you would think.
      - SmellTheGlove 9y ago
        I'm not even mad. It's hard to jam them in the wrong way nowadays! What socket was this?
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  This brings me back to LGA775 - or more specifically, when I wanted to insert an LGA771 CPU into that socket. Cutting off the notch in the motherboard's socket was something I never thought I'd do! Oh and before anyone goes off trying this, you do need to swap two pins - you can buy a conductive sticker online to make it easy. I just upgraded to i7 6 months ago - you'd be surprised how well a Xeon x5470 (4 cores @ 3.33 GHz, 12MB cache) can stave off the need to upgrade. I'm not a gamer, though.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  They could've added the extra pins, and kept the square pin count, but then molded the ceramic such that one corner is clipped, then had a socket to match that would only allow full insertion if the chip body is rotated to match. Of course, doing all of that would have drove the cost up considerably - for not much practical purposes. No company that wants to stay in business is going to do that, and I wouldn't expect them to.

AMD was sooo close to having a perfect 4096 socket. SO CLOSE! But, alas, it was not meant to be.

by tscs37 9y ago

AMD was sooo close to having a perfect 4096 socket. SO CLOSE! But, alas, it was not meant to be.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ant6n 9y ago

Missing corner pins means you won't accidentally insert it the wrong way.

tscs37 9y ago
What about a socket that is like USB-C, there is no wrong way to insert it. Though I imagine such a socket would be an insane task to complete and have numerous problems with latency and speed.
- GlitchMr 9y ago
  Waste of pins. You would need to quadruple number of pins or so (with a square shape, it may be worth to just have rectangular to just double). It is possible, fairly sure, but not really practical.
  - wccrawford 9y ago
    Or maybe only double the pins, if you no longer make it square. But you're right, it's a waste of time and money.
    - zokier 9y ago
      Couldn't you hypothetically design the pinout to be suitably symmetrical to avoid major part of the wasted pins. For example if the chip has 4 memory channels, then lay out the memory pins identically but rotated in each quadrant. Same principle should apply to other major pin count consumers (pcie lanes, power/ground pins), which leaves somewhat small area that needs to be duplicated/quadrupled. Of course implementing such design would be ridiculously complicated with very little benefit. But it would be pretty cool though :)
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  Engineering a socket like that has to be a low priority. It's not as though people are reseating their CPUs every day, and generally speaking, the people that do it can handle aligning it properly.
  - solotronics 9y ago
    I helped a friend build a computer back in school and when he got the parts in the mail he hurriedly started building (against my advice to wait until I got there) he put the CPU in the wrong way and bent some of the pins. So it does happen more than you would think.
    - SmellTheGlove 9y ago
      I'm not even mad. It's hard to jam them in the wrong way nowadays! What socket was this?
SmellTheGlove 9y ago
This brings me back to LGA775 - or more specifically, when I wanted to insert an LGA771 CPU into that socket. Cutting off the notch in the motherboard's socket was something I never thought I'd do! Oh and before anyone goes off trying this, you do need to swap two pins - you can buy a conductive sticker online to make it easy. I just upgraded to i7 6 months ago - you'd be surprised how well a Xeon x5470 (4 cores @ 3.33 GHz, 12MB cache) can stave off the need to upgrade. I'm not a gamer, though.
cr0sh 9y ago
They could've added the extra pins, and kept the square pin count, but then molded the ceramic such that one corner is clipped, then had a socket to match that would only allow full insertion if the chip body is rotated to match. Of course, doing all of that would have drove the cost up considerably - for not much practical purposes. No company that wants to stay in business is going to do that, and I wouldn't expect them to.