Report: Intel Alder Lake-S CPUs to Drop Into New, Taller Socket

[harlan4096]

You may be replacing your motherboard again in two generations.

We've hardly had a moment to catch our breath since Intel formally announced the Comet Lake-S desktop CPUs, but new rumors are already streaming in about future Intel products. The latest claims Alder Lake-S chips will drop into a new socket known as LGA1700. 

The information comes courtesy of the Taiwanese lit-tech, where the company listed a product entry for an LGA1700 interposer and noted that it is for the Alder Lake-S platform. 
 
Intel's 9th Generation of Core processors were formerly called Coffee Lake, and the new 10th Gen chips announced last week were known as Comet Lake-S. Following Comet Lake-S, Intel Rocket Lake-S CPUs are expected to arrive and drop into the same LGA1200 socket that Intel just released for Comet Lake-S. But now we're hearing that with Rocket Lake-S' successor, Alder Lake-S, will debut with yet another new socket. 

However, Alder Lake-S featuring a new socket wouldn't be that surprising. Alder Lake-S chips are expected to feature a whole new design, with rumors pointing to a big.Little architecture. This is a hybrid architecture featuring small, efficient Gracemont cores paired with an equal number of big, punchy and power-hungry Golden Cove cores. In a way, the design is similar to Intel's Lakefield platform, which will be the first to feature Intel's Foveros 3D stacking technology on a CPU.

Because of its increased pin count, the LGA1700 socket is also expected to grow in size, as was tweeted by hardware leaker @Komachi_ensaka in January.

Whereas the LGA1151 and LGA1200 sockets measure 37.5 x 37.5mm, LGA1700 is expected to maintain the same width but grow slightly taller to 45mm.

Unfortunately, this radically new socket design  would also mean that existing CPU coolers likely won't be compatible without tweaks. 

We previously heard rumors that Alder Lake-S would debut this year, but with Rocket Lake-S still needing to land first, we're not positive on a release date. Plus, at this time Intel hasn't confirmed either upcoming CPU generations, so take information on the rumored chips with a pinch of salt.
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