When will pins no longer be needed for CPU or socket?

[Wayfall]

Hi

As the titles asks.

Will CPU sockets some time in the future not need socket pins?
Maybe there will be a new socket design in the future where there is no chance to bend or damage anything while installing a CPU.

I always feel slightly tense when installing an Intel CPU due to the amount of pins in the socket and that I have bend a few pins of a board in the past somehow while install an i5, I preferred AMD's plastic socket really due to back when I had an FM2 system and the socket had holes for the needles on the CPU to sit in.

Will there be a future where there will be no more bent socket or CPU pins?

 

[Spencer_10]

Intel have changed it many times in the past for example , the Pentium II cartridge design was like plugging in a PCI card.

And they have swapped between pins being on the CPU and holes in the motherboard and the opposite a few times.

They could change it again where it it is already socketed and you just plug in a lead but I think the current method helps with planned obsolescence.
As the more that get broken the more replacements they can sell.

 

[Hlsgsz]

Hi

As the titles asks.

Will CPU sockets some time in the future not need socket pins?
Maybe there will be a new socket design in the future where there is no chance to bend or damage anything while installing a CPU.

I always feel slightly tense when installing an Intel CPU due to the amount of pins in the socket and that I have bend a few pins of a board in the past somehow while install an i5, I preferred AMD's plastic socket really due to back when I had an FM2 system and the socket had holes for the needles on the CPU to sit in.

Will there be a future where there will be no more bent socket or CPU pins?

Be careful what you wish for, as, unfortunately, we may be heading towards a future where almost if not everything is SoC, entailing an era where enthusiast choice is a thing of the past.

 

[little_me]

Well, the reason for said pins is.. that processors need to get into contact with motherboard.
Intel moved to their own style compared to AMD's due to increase in pin count and AMD's pin count being pretty much maxed out as far as the socket AM3 can hold.(942)
Yes, it could be more secure and less prone to faults, like those slot A (amd) and slot 1 (intel) which resembled pci bus.
Downside is, the amount of contact one could fit in there was limited. (242) If they had gone to limited two layer contacts like in AGP, it could have doubled that to 484, which is still less than socket 754 that AMD went to next (754 pins)

In short, processors need more physical contacts, real estate is expensive, contact points get smaller and smaller or processors grow bigger and bigger.
would you want your Intel cpu to be four times bigger to get less bendy pins? Bigger pins usually mean that they are more sturdy. Bigger is not the direction things seem to be going towards though. Intel CPU is already only a fraction of the actual Die you put on the socket. rest of the area is used to spread the contact points apart so that they can get connected.

So.. only way to solve the pins being bendy/breaking problem is.. to get processors soldered to MB in the factory, the price? you cannot change them.

I myself would not want that for the simple reason that it lessens choice of what I can pick when I build new system. For me personally, I usually use the system as is without big upgrades (GPU/disks, maybe) as far as it goes so soldered on MB wouldn't really hurt me as such.
It might be that amount of motherboards would lessen dramatically though (and price would rise since MB price would be CPU+MB)

 

[suck3rs]

Intel have changed it many times in the past for example , the Pentium III cartridge design was like plugging in a PCI card.

And they have swapped between pins being on the CPU and holes in the motherboard and the opposite a few times.

They could change it again where it it is already socketed and you just plug in a lead but I think the current method helps with planned obsolescence.
As the more that get broken the more replacements they can sell.

Do you mean the Pentium 2?

 

[CountMike]

Intel have changed it many times in the past for example , the Pentium III cartridge design was like plugging in a PCI card.

And they have swapped between pins being on the CPU and holes in the motherboard and the opposite a few times.

They could change it again where it it is already socketed and you just plug in a lead but I think the current method helps with planned obsolescence.
As the more that get broken the more replacements they can sell.

Do you mean the Pentium 2?

Both. But they did have a socket and pins on the processor, just was mounted on card and with integrated cooler.
AMD also had Slot A card with first Athlons mounted on it.
Some very high end work stations still use arraignments like that to upgrade parallel processing to hundreds of CPUs. Each card contains more than just processor, it's almost a small format computer in itself.

 

[Wayfall]

Just looked up images of PCI CPU's, fascinating they are.