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What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this? Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CP

• ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
  I am going to use this listing in my pre-prompt
• Cold_Miserable 2y ago
  Intel makes money selling motherboard chipsets. There's no excuse, just greed.
• grandinj 2y ago
  It costs money to validate a new processor on an old motherboard, and no corp wants to waste money on a product they have already sold.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • lupire 2y ago
    The new processor isn't sold yet.
    • thfuran 2y ago
      Sure, but why pay to validate on old boards when you can instead get many of their users to pay you for new ones?
  • gregmac 2y ago
    This is my thought, too. I'd bet customer perception is also a factor; there's a risk the old boards (not even made by Intel) die and cause problems, and Intel wouldn't want to deal with press/comments like "This CPU stopped working after 2 months" or "I installed this new CPU, and within 2 months it killed my motherboard that had been working fine for 7 years". They've released CPU upgrades with the same socket before, I'm sure they have the sales data to know how that performs vs new socket. Laptops have outsold desktops for well over a decade, and their CPUs pretty much non-upgradable. I can't easily find a nice chart to reference, but intuition tells me the desktop industry is similarly trending towards complete "system" sales vs individual parts. In other words: Most people don't upgrade their CPU, they upgrade by replacing the entire system. If true, this also means the socket would be almost entirely irrelevant to sales performance.
  • vel0city 2y ago
    It costs money to validate a new processor on an older motherboard design. How much does it cost to make a completely new motherboard design?
    • wmf 2y ago
      They're going to make new motherboards every year regardless, so any support for old motherboards is in addition to that.
  • crote 2y ago
    AMD ran into significant compatibility issues with AM4, with some motherboards not being able to supply the amount of power needed by the newer CPUs and PCI-E Gen 4 support being removed in the final BIOS release due to reliability issues. A lot of motherboards also didn't have enough flash space to contain the firmware needed for the whole CPU range, so the update to support the newer gen had to remove support for the oldest gen. Turns out it's really hard to guarantee compatibility with several years of third-party products which weren't designed with your new fancy features in mind.
    • Dylan16807 2y ago
      Newer doesn't usually mean more power, though. You can just have a power limit, it's fine. And I don't expect PCIe to get faster with a CPU upgrade anyway. The flash space was pretty forseeable and they dealt with it, more of an excuse than anything.
  • babypuncher 2y ago
    Motherboard manufacturers don't seem to mind doing it for AMD chips
• fizzynut 2y ago
  Intel basically made the same CPU for about 6 years straight because of 10nm process issues. They had to keep pretending the next gen "Lake" CPU was substantially different from the last, so they just took last gen product, made some minor tweaks to break compatibility and called it a new generation
  • _the_inflator 2y ago
    Same goes for most cars. No real revolution, tweaks or changes due to regulatory demands, but nothing groundbreaking.
    • constantcrying 2y ago
      Cars don't get a new model every year. They are even called "facelifts" to make it clear that it is essentially the same with minor modifications and upgrades. Also there isn't much "groundbreaking" you can do in a car, except for the EV switch, the industry has existed on many small upgrades over time. (Like many other industries)
    • jeffhuys 2y ago
      Still, when you’re due for a new car and look for the newest of the newest, would you go with manufacturer A, who released their latest car 8 years ago, or manufacturer B, who released it 1 year ago? Incremental upgrades get so much hate around the internet (mostly about phones) by people having the version before it. Saying things like “ah they changed almost nothing! Why would I upgrade?!” While for instance me, only on my 3rd smartphone EVER, would love all the incremental updates over the years when I finally decide I need a new one, because I always get the latest and greatest. If a company then doesn’t release anything for a few years, I’d go somewhere else.
      • Dylan16807 2y ago
        New models every year are fine if they're honestly labeled and have technologically reasonable compatibility. Cars and phones meet those criteria a lot better than Intel CPUs. The problem isn't releasing things, it's the way they pretend every release is a big advance and the way they make the motherboards almost never able to upgrade.
• Qem 2y ago
  > Logic and reason would have me believe they'd want to sell as many CPUs as possible, and keeping the socket compatible for as long as possible would seem logical. x86 market is a near monopolistic one, with two companies cornering most of the market. Monopolies can afford to sustain irrational/inefficient practices as long it helps to squeeze the consumer. I hope RISC-V succeeds in breaking this duopoly. Perhaps now with the latest round of sanctions against China, if their full industrial might is thrown behind open designs, we may have some hope to crash the duopoly.
  • hinkley 2y ago
    If you’re hoping RISC-V will get market share then it’s three companies, not two. Intel, AMD, and Apple.
  • II2II 2y ago
    If you're going to bring in RISC-V, why not mention ARM? They're currently more of a threat to Intel than RISC-V and likely will be over the next decade. They have a near monopoly for anything that is not a computer that requires anything more than a low performance microcontroller, and are supported to varying degrees by the three major general purpose operating systems. RISC-V likely has a promising future, but the foundations are still being laid.
• zackmorris 2y ago
  Coming of age in the 90s and witnessing the sheer audacity of greed that followed, I can tell you that the cynical answer tends to be the right one.
  • hinkley 2y ago
    Especially considering Intel came of age in the 90’s as well.
• pessimizer 2y ago
  I would say that Intel is a company, not a person, and isn't motivated but directed. If the same people own both Intel and the mobo manufacturers, they win by forcing new purchases of new products primarily distinguished by a higher price. One computer owner in a thousand upgrades their processor alone, or would even know how to.
  • Arelius 2y ago
    > I would say that Intel is a company ... and isn't motivated but directed You know, it's a matter of perspective, but I'd disagree. I think we'd like to think companies are directed, but I think as they get larger and older, especially public companies, they operate less by difection, and the systemic forces take over, and they operate and function more by the aggregate sum of all the motivations of the actors involved. I think it's true that some companies do exist, perhaps by sheer force of personality of their leaders, that remain primarily "directed" but feel that's more the exception than the rule.
• utensil4778 2y ago
  Intel sells the chipset that goes along with the processor, as well as selling their own motherboards. I think the profit incentive here is obvious. Why sell just a CPU when you can sell a CPU and a chipset and a motherboard?
  • kube-system 2y ago
    Intel stopped selling motherboards in 2013.
• Laforet 2y ago
  Intel actually intended for LGA1151 to remain unchanged for Coffee Lake but found out late in the testing process that many existing motherboards did not have enough power delivery capability to support the planned 6 and 8 core parts. Hence the decision to lock them out in software only. They are probably aware of the bad optics but decided that it’s better than trying to deal with the RMAs later. It’s very similar to what had happened in 2006 when the 65nm Core 2 series were released in the same LGA775 package used by 90nm Pentium 4s, however the former mandated a specific VRM standard that not all comtemporary motherboards supported. Later 45nm parts pretty much required a new motherboard despite having the same socket again due to power supply issues. AMD went the other route when they first introduced their 12 and 16 core parts to the AM4 socket. A lot of older motherboards were clearly struggling to cope with the power draw but AMD got to keep their implicit promise of all-round compatibility. Later on AMD tried to silently drop support for older motherboards when the Ryzen 5000 series were introduced but had to back down after some backlash. Unlike the blue brand they could not afford to offend the fanboys. P.S. Despite the usual complaints, most previous Intel socket changes actually had valid technical reasons for them: - LGA1155: Major change to integrated GPU, also fixed the weird pin assignment of LGA1156 which made board layout a major pain. - LGA1150: Introduction of on-die voltage regulation (FIVR) - LGA1151: Initial support for DDR4 and separate clock domains This leaves the LGA1200 as the only example where there really isn’t any justification for its existence.
  • Dylan16807 2y ago
    Why does a socket that can support DDR3 or DDR4 need to be different from a socket that only supports DDR3? And with the current socket being 1700, they're going to change it again for the next generation to 1851, and with a quick look I don't see any feature changes that are motivating the change. (Upgrading 4 of the PCIe lanes to match the speed of the other 16 definitely does not count as something that motivates a socket change.) So by my reckoning, half their desktop socket changes in the last decade have been unnecessary.
    • qball 2y ago
      Because DDR4 is electrically different and memory controllers are all on-die. Intel could get away with doing that pre-Nehalem because the memory was connected via the northbridge and not directly (which is what AMD was doing at the time; their CPUs outperformed Intel's partially due to that), so the CPU could be memory-agnostic. AMD would later need to switch to a new socket to run DDR3 RAM, but that socket was physically compatible with AM2 (AM3 CPUs would have both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers and switch depending on which memory they were paired with; AM3+ CPUs would do away with that though). There were some benefits to doing that; the last time Intel realized them was in 2001 when RD-RAM turned out to be a dead-end. Socket 423 processors would ultimately prove compatible with RDRAM, SDRAM, and DDR SDRAM.
• fennecfoxy 2y ago
  To be fair I don't upgrade PC all that often (my 1080ti still going strooong!) So when I do upgrade (every 6 years or so, it's currently been since 2018 and I still feel no need) then not only does the CPU technology need a bump, but the bridges on the mobo also need an update. Going from a 2018->2024 mobo is guaranteed to get you things like more/faster m.2 slots etc as well. I suppose they could make compatible with old and new boards but I imagine it's much easier for them to design 1:1 new cpu + chipset than to design and test 1:* new cpu, new chipset, old chipset 1, old chipset 2, etc.
  • immibis 2y ago
    My i7-6700k was going strong until the motherboard died for the second time. I suspect a solder crack caused by issue vibration from a damaged fan (and my only evidence for that is the fact the fan is damaged and vibrates and that two different motherboards died). Might try reflowing it to revive it, eventually. After reviewing my options I would have either bought a third motherboard or upgraded to something like a Threadripper (I did the latter). Upgrading to a current desktop Intel system just didn't seem really worth it when I already had most of a working one and it was still fast enough. You actually have FEWER expansion slots on the newer desktop motherboards because they've pre-decided what you want: a desktop has a 16x GPU slot and a 4x NVMe slot, and that's it. Gone are the days of generic uncommitted expansion slots, mostly.
• pwg 2y ago
  > What is the financial benefit to Intel in artificially limiting its CPU sockets like this? They (Intel) also make the chipsets that go on the motherboards. So anyone who disposes of their old motherboard and buys a new motherboard because of this limitation results in: 1) new CPU sale to Intel 2) new chipset sale to Intel (indirect sale via the motherboard manufacturer) Given that a "new CPU" sale plus a "new motherboard chipset" sale is more revenue to Intel than just a "new CPU" sale alone the financial benefit becomes obvious.
  • pieresqi 2y ago
    [dead]
  • godelski 2y ago
    Not to mention that they know people have to upgrade, and in not that long of a time (5 years-ish?). The strategy doesn't work if it was something like a car where the lifespan is 20+ years, but with high turnover they have people over a barrel. Now AMD competes, but I think we forget that this is a new thing (and likely because if you're on HN, you're deep in this environment). So the big question is: will Intel continue, or will they recognize that they don't have the choice anymore. That is, of course, as long as AMD decides to not play the same game.