Intel's upcoming chips code named Sandy Bridge, are going to be 32nm chips and will need a new socket (yea, you need a new motherboard !)

There are 2 new sockets around the corner. The LGA 1155, which is for mainstream Dual core and Quad core processors. These will not only have an IMC, but also an on die GPU and also a 16 lane PCIe controller.

The second socket, the LGA 2011, is for the enthusiast platform,X68. The reason for this massive increase in pin number is due to a few reasons. One,it supports a 256bit memory bus, thats Quad channel memory !!! Also, its got a full 32 lane PCIe controller on die,hence this massive socket will house Intel's high end Hexa and Octa core processors.

The LGA 1155 based motherboards are due to be launched in Q1 of 2011,but we could find them being released in Q4 2010 itself. The LGA 2011 will take a little more time, the X68 motherboards are due to be released in Q3 2011, so that's roughly 3 years after the X58 was released, which was believed to be a future proof platform, oh well !

All this is in contrast to that of AMD's offerings, their processors are very much backward compatible with older motherboards.

Source:Bit-tech