TE Connectivity, a company that designs and produces connectivity and sensor products, has launched the LGA4189 socket for the upcoming Intel Ice Lake-SP (ICL-SP) and Cooper Laker (CPL) processors.
Intel has already confirmed that Ice Lake-SP and Cooper Lake processors will be socket-compatible and share the same platform. Nevertheless, TE Connectivity's latest LGA4189 offerings suggest that there is a separate variant of the LGA4189 socket for certain Cooper Lake parts.
The LGA4189 socket, which has been validated by Intel, is seemingly available in two different flavors: LGA4189-4 and LGA4189-5. When we put both sockets side by side, it's evident that they share the same design and mounting mechanisms. Both sockets exhibit the exact 4189-pin layout, 0.9906 mm hex pitch, and 2.7 mm SP height. So why Intel would need two separate sockets for Cooper Lake is beyond us.
Taobao, a very popular Chinese online shopping website, has a listing for an LGA4189 socket along with some screenshots of a confidential Intel document might be able to give us some insight on why there are two sockets for Cooper Lake. If the information is legit, the LGA4189-4 socket, also known as Socket P4, is designed for the Whitley platform and houses Ice Lake-SP and Cooper Lake-4 chips. The LGA4189-5 socket, which is branded as Socket P5, is tailored specifically for the Cedar Island platform and accommodates Cooper Lake-6 chips.
So far, the rumors claim that Cooper Lake-4 and Cooper Lake-6 allude to Cooper Lake-SP and Cooper Lake-P processors, respectively. The current theory is that the number in the Cooper Lake codenames refer to the amount of Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI) links. In terms of core counts, Cooper Lake-SP chips pack up to 56 cores while Cooper Lake-P parts are rumored to max out at 26 cores. The first supposedly supports eight memory channels, and the latter only supports up to six memory channels.
TE Connectivity's description of the LGA4189 socket affirms that the socket is designed for Intel's next-generation processors with PCIe 4.0 support. Since we already know Cooper Lake is still on PCIe 3.0, TE Connectivity is probably referring to the Ice Lake-SP parts, which are expected to drop next year.
