Intel announced that they’d not sell Intel branded motherboards after the Haswell generation, winding down the business in the next three years.
This move wasn’t entirely unexpected. A few weeks ago, there was a rumour that suggested that Haswell would be the last generation to support the LGA socket, after which Intel would only sell soldered BGA socket processors. There was an uproar from the tech community — Would Intel drive motherboard manufacturers out of business? Would Intel kill the openness of the PC in general and the desktop in particular? Will Intel achieve world domination? Ok, maybe not the last one.
So the facts are, for now, these: While Haswell parts will use the LGA socket (though not the same one as Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge), Broadwell will not. It will indeed use the BGA package. But, Broadwell will most probably not be released for the retail desktop processor market, which means that only OEMs will have access to these chips. You won’t be able to buy them for your desktop, nor will you be able to upgrade your future Haswell system with a Broadwell chip, like you can do with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge today.
This, amongst other reasons is probably why they decided to stop with the motherboards. It simply won’t be worth it to sell them anymore. They’ll continue to develop chipsets and work with motherboard manufacturers, but the company believes that the third party designs are good enough, and they don’t need to be in the same market. It’s a stark contrast from the 90’s, when Intel was the biggest PC motherboard maker in the world.
So desktops are dead, you’d guess? Not at all! Intel’s trying to merge its Core and Atom lines, and Broadwell just provides that step an opportunity. After Broadwell, the 14nm “tock” cycle will lead to Skylake in 2015, and the company will return to the LGA socket. I’m assuming that this year onwards, the retail channel will only see alternate updates, presumably allowing for each generation to properly stock up and sell.
Right now it’s a bit crazy, with slow adoption times and lasting inventories.
The plus side to this is that each time there’s an update on the desktop, it'll be worth it. For example, Haswell will support DDR3, but then Broadwell moves to DDR4. Skylake will naturally be DDR4 too, and the one year away from the retail channel gives memory makers, motherboard makers and Intel itself more time to consolidate new technologies and drop prices.
So in 2015, we’ll all have a solid reason to upgrade our machines. Currently, few owners of a 2nd generation Core processor (Sandy Bridge) or later would see much benefit in upgrading to Haswell.