The pressure is on the motherboard makers to deliver affordable P55 solutions.
Without affordable motherboards, Lynnfield will fail - so Intel and end users are both expecting a healthy supply of ~$100 motherboards. As I’m about to show you, doing so is quite difficult.
The socket itself costs a couple of dollars, but even that is significantly more than LGA-775. The bulk of the 1156 socket isn’t the cost of the device, but rather the licensing fee that has to be paid to Intel for each socket. I’ve heard
numbers approaching $7 per socket, per board once you include the licensing fees. As volumes go up, the price per socket will go down, but for smaller manufacturers this is a tough pill to swallow. It’s far easier to build an expensive motherboard than it is to build a cheaper one.
If you start at $40 for the motherboard, you’ll need to add another $10 for a 6-layer PCB. A 6-layer PCB is necessary
if you want to run SLi at this point, otherwise you can get by with a cheaper $5 4-layer PCB. Mentioning SLi also requires validation and support from nVidia.
That’s $30 up front plus an average of $5 per motherboard. P55 motherboards will have a range of 4 to 24-phase power delivery circuitry.
Each phase costs about $2 in components although the high end motherboards with high quality MOSFETs/chokes/capacitors will reach $3 per phase.
The power connectors, switches, LEDs, I/O back panel and other components on the motherboard cost anywhere between $8 and $15 depending on the type of motherboard. What about those fancy copper heatpipes and elaborate heatsinks? They start at $6 and go as high as $25 for the really high end motherboards. While we'll definitely see P55 motherboards hit the $100 price point, it's worth realizing how difficult that is to do. As P55 matures, these costs will fall (particularly the chipset) but initially it's going to be a tough race to the bottom.
Izvor:
AnandTech