Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs will seemingly use a new LGA1954 socket
Shipping documents sourced from NBD.ltd purport that Intel might switch to the LGA1954 platform for its next-generation Nova Lake processors on desktop (via Olrak). This is accompanied by PCH tooling likely intended for the 900-series chipsets. Importantly, these listings do not indicate an imminent launch, especially since Nova Lake has officially been confirmed as a 2026 product.
Nova Lake is officially a part of Intel's product family, set to supersede Arrow Lake next year. Preliminary silicon configurations allege two clusters of eight Coyote Cove P-cores and 16 Arctic Wolf E-cores, complemented by four Low-Power Efficient (LPE) cores in the SoC Tile, adding up to 52 hybrid cores. Intel's engineers explore numerous design strategies, so whether this ambitious 52-core project will ever see the light of day is unclear.
The information within the manifests implies that Intel is actively distributing LGA1954 testing hardware to its global facilities. Specifically, these are not full-fledged motherboards but appear to be some form of a specialized interposer to test voltage regulation for the upcoming platform. Either way, these kits are designated for "NVL-S", the shorthand for Nova Lake Desktop.
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There are also mentions of reball jigs or reballing stations for an 888-ball BGA chip, measuring 600 mm2 (25mm x 24mm), and these seem to be for Nova Lake's PCH. Existing 800-series chipsets (Z890, B860, and H810) use a package that's around 650 mm2. So, Nova Lake's south bridge might be a tad smaller than Arrow Lake's, but this isn't particularly informative.
The limited lifespan of LGA1851 is a letdown, though the rumored Arrow Lake Refresh might offer some solace to enthusiasts who've invested a lot in this platform. Intel platforms typically last for two generations, and while LGA1700 was an exception, the 13th and 14th generations were mere refreshes, using the same process nodes, and (almost) similar architectures, stemming from Alder Lake.
LGA1954 will feature 1,954 electrically active landing pads. The total count, including debugging pins, could exceed 2,000, as many sockets feature more pads than their name indicates; a fact that was meticulously confirmed by a manual count of all the pads on an LGA1851 motherboard at an event in Japan. If this leak holds, Nova Lake and possibly even Razer Lake should be compatible with the LGA1954 platform, but the provided details are stretched too thin for us to draw any conclusive statements.
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