Intel appears to be cooking up a beefier Nova Lake socket clamp to stop its future desktop chips getting bendy or crispy.
If you are a hardware enthusiast, you probably know Intel’s independent loading mechanism, or ILM, can warp CPUs over time. The ILM is the retention clamp that holds the CPU in the socket, which sounds dull until your chip starts looking like a Pringle.
According to Hot Hardware Chipzilla released a reduced-load version of the ILM with Arrow Lake, which mostly fixed the issue, but made it optional. Now Chipzilla appears to have another ILM variant coming with Nova Lake. This one looks less about correcting curvature and more about dealing with high current.
Older processors used pin grid array sockets, or PGA, where the pins sat on the CPU itself. Modern chips use land grid array sockets, or LGA, where the pins live in the socket instead.
LGA has plenty of advantages, including denser pins, better electrical performance and CPUs that are less likely to be mangled by ham-fisted builders. The downside is that it needs a precise compression force to ensure the CPU and socket contact each other properly.
That is why Intel uses ILMs, while AMD calls its equivalent on socket AM5 a SAM. Chipzilla’s next-generation Nova Lake processor family is expected to include models with as many as 52 CPU cores.
That will need a silly amount of socket power. One earlier leak claimed top-end Nova Lake parts would have a short-period boost power limit of 471W. Carrying hundreds of amps across tiny contacts is a splendid way to start a fire if the contact is not secure.
That means the landing pads on the bottom of the CPU and the pins inside the socket need to behave themselves. Enter the 2L-ILM.
The 2L-ILM could simply ensure the CPU is held firmly enough to avoid problems from the high power draw of top-end Nova Lake chips. It could also be connected to the CPU bending problem that annoyed DIY builders in the first place.
The reduced-load ILM helped avoid bending, but required a heatsink with enough mounting force to prevent dodgy contact between the CPU and pins. Chipzilla may have decided to stop leaving this to system builders and create a new ILM that spreads load more evenly while applying more of it.
It is unclear whether these new ILMs will appear on all Nova Lake motherboards or only posh models. It will be just as interesting to see whether top-end Nova Lake parts with dual compute tiles will work properly on boards without a 2L-ILM.