Intel Not Abandoning Socketed CPUs After All

Around a week ago, an information leak revealed 14nm Broadwell CPUs, as well as details on the Haswell CPU lineup. One of the things people surmised was that there wouldn't be anything besides BGA-packaged CPUs two years from now.

BGA stands for ball grid array and is the type of central processing unit that cannot be replaced after being soldered to a socket.

The DIY market (do-it-yourself) is where such processors can never find a place, as many people like to put together their own systems, or ask others to do it for them. They also replace their chips often.

This is why people became worried when one news website on the Internet assumed Intel would stop making interchangeable CPUs altogether after Haswell.

It would mean no more LGA socket processors after all (LGA 1156, LGA 775, LGA 1155, LGA 1366).

AMD has already assured us, and everyone else, that it will not abandon the DIY market.

Intel has now made its own public statement, in a conversation with Maximum PC magazine, in which it promises the same.

“Intel remains committed to the growing desktop enthusiast and channel markets, and will continue to offer socketed parts in the LGA package for the foreseeable future for our customers and the Enthusiast DIY market,” said Intel spokesman Daniel Snyder.

“However, Intel cannot comment on specific long-term product roadmap plans at this time, but will disclose more details later per our normal communication process.”

Essentially, Intel suggests that it will not make a full transition to BGA packaging when 14nm Broadwell chips debut, not on the mainstream and high-end DIY market anyway.

Alas, Intel did not actually say what the “foreseeable future” meant. It also did not deny that, at least on the low-end segment, it would sell permanently fused motherboard+CPU kits (Atom series).