Intel's Gargantuan Next-gen Enterprise CPU Socket is LGA4677

Intel has finalized design of its next-generation Xeon Scalable enterprise CPU socket for its "Sapphire Rapids" processors. Called LGA4677, the socket succeeds LGA3647, and is bound for a 2021 market release. Intel will have transitioned to its advanced 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication node on the CPU front, and has adopted an "enterprise-first" strategy for the node. LGA4677 will be designed to handle the extremely high bandwidth of PCI-Express Gen 5, which doubles bandwidth over PCIe gen 4.0, and adds several enterprise-specific features Intel is rolling out in advance as part of its CXL interconnect. These details, along with a prototype LGA4189 socket, was revealed at an exhibit by TE Connectivity, a company that manufactures the socket. The additional pin-count could enable Intel to not just deploy PCI-Express Gen 5, but also expand I/O in other directions, such as more memory channels, dedicated Persistent Memory I/O, etc.