(Column) - Every once in a while when you are sitting alone, thinking back to all those years you’ve spent on technology, you realize that standards are meant to be updated and consistency isn’t the hardware industry’s strong suit. Intel had Socket 478, LGA 775 and considering the pattern; Intel would most likely change it yet again when it launches the next lineup. AMD, on the other hand, has Socket 754, 939 and 940 in its current generation, which adds to a lot of complication over something as particularly minute as the pin count. AMD is about to change all that, however, a lot of its customers will be left out feeling burnt.

AMD plans to unify its entire processor line (754 and 939) into socket 940 (presently on the Opteron series). So basically you would have entry level processors on the same pin count as high end servers, which would go a long way in cutting costs as the same machinery would be able to manufacture various kinds 90nm chips. This means that AMD would be able to scale production based on demand, and since it would be sourcing similar material, it’ll probably give it better economies of scale. This kind of a uniform platform would also allow AMD to adjust production in different fabrication units depending on the number of chips retailing in the market.

The biggest thing it’ll take care of is the headache we all have when it comes to remembering the socket variants (in addition to their corresponding processors, their model names and specifications). According to online reports, AMD’s next generation of processors would be compatible with Socket M2. Whether AMD migrates completely to the new socket design or slowly phase in is yet to be seen, but logically, the gradual shift makes more sense.

Whether or not this means that you can take any Intel or AMD processor and insert it into any of the M2 boards still remains to be seen and AMD is neither confirming nor denying the report. But theoretically, it should give it the hardware capability of running any processor on any AMD board.

Currently, the restrictions that the pin counts apply are many, and this obviously fragments the market quite a bit. Intel is looking at a similar solution, but that will only come into effect sometime in Q3, 2006.

For consumers, the obvious advantage is that since the platform is going to be uniform, they can purchase an M2 board and keep upgrading the processor at will, something they are not able to do currently. The details of the HyperTransport speeds and other specifications are of course an entirely different matter, but the possibilities are quite interesting nonetheless.