Gideon
Platinum Member
- Nov 27, 2007
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It costs very little when silicon is done maybe it isn't competitive in the market or something
It does not cost 'very little' to have a SoC, designed with a Northbridge on board, work in a totally different socket. It's a lot more design/validation work than in the case of Kaveri for instance (where it is indeed quite trivial).
The other possiblity is to create a new socket and mobo chipset (FM3 or sth). They opted not to go that route, probably because it wouldn't be optimal for Zen anyway (maybe there is no socketed version of that or it will have 4 memory channels or whatnot).
We know from AMDs own statements, that they planned to do a FM2 version of Carrizo, we also know that it was going to have a max TDP of 65W. They probably looked at the validation effort and decided that those engineers would be better used on more profitable projects down the line.
And it sort of makes sense. At 45-65W the CPU will almost certainly be a sidestep. The GPU would probably be noticeably better, but that probably isn't enough to justify the engineering effort. I mean for desktops there is always the discreet GPU option. And for Mini-PCs and set-top boxes 35-45W BGA would be just fine.
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