At OCP Summit 2023, we saw a massive new socket up close. Intel was showing off its 2024 platforms openly. This was very different than the last few years where displays had strange DIMM slot coverings and such. Instead, we got hands-on with the new LGA7529 socket that will handle chips like the next-generation Sierra Forest-AP Xeon CPUs.
Massive Intel LGA7529 Socket for Sierra Forest at OCP Summit 2023
In our previous piece, we covered how Intel showed Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest motherboards at OCP Summit 2023. Those were focused on dual-socket solutions.
At OCP Summit 2023, there were more boards present, one of which was a M-DNO form factor (OCP half-width) motherboard that is designed for 500W+ processors.
As we can see, there are 11x MCIO x8 connectors for a total of 88 lanes of MCIO cabled PCIe Gen5 connectivity on this single socket board as well as 12x DDR5 DIMM slots.
In the middle of the board (Diet Pepsi for scale) there is the giant upcoming LGA7529-1 socket.
The socket was made by Lotes, but we saw a few other vendors make the sockets on the show floor.
Something different with this is that there is both the outer cover pictured above and another pin cover that one can see below on the socket.
Once we removed these, we could see the upcoming socket for Sierra Forest-AP which Intel says is already in production and will be officially launched in 1H 2024. Usually, “1H” is code for a June launch.
If you just want to see pins, here you go.
Intel has four guide pin screw points again, but these are now on each side of the socket instead of nearer to the corners.
Final Words
Since we had the photos, we figured folks might want to see Intel’s next-gen big socket. With all of that PCIe Gen5 I/O and the 12 channel DDR5 memory, Intel needs more pins, and more pins this new socket has as LGA7529.
Of course, we will have reviews of platforms when we can. Also, in the meantime, we have the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Emerald Rapids launch on December 14, 2023 so this socket is technically two mainstream Intel server CPU launches away, although we expect at least one more platform to launch before LGA7529.
This is for Sierra Forest-AP and Granite-AP. Regular Sierra Forest will use the same standard Granite-SP socket
Is there a possibility this socket will be available for enthusiast gaming motherboard’s?
It’s Pin Wars now.
The SP3 with 12 channels of memory uses 4094 pins, the SP6 uses 6096, 2002 more, so the SP7 with an expected 16 channels of memory (and likely CXL 3.0 and PCIe 6) will surely add over 2000 more pins; catapulting it into the lead (pun intended).