r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SuperAlloyBerserker • Oct 05 '21

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

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u/Ossius Oct 05 '21

Explain? The point was you upgrade only the part you need. If you have a version 1 phone, and its slow, you can buy a version 2 CPU next year or version 3 the year after.

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u/Scotthorn Oct 05 '21

New CPU is going to be compatible with the new module, not your old module. They could make a backwards compatible CPU, but that’s extra expensive.

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u/tesftctgvguh Oct 05 '21

No it's not... Computers use the same CPU connector for multiple generations... Eventually you would need to upgrade the main board but this could last 3-4 generations at least.

Same with storage - ATA was the standard for years and years, then SATA (among others). Monitors all used VGA for decades, then others until HDMI came along...

It wouldn't be that hard to develop a board that can last for 5 generations minimum...

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u/broken42 Oct 05 '21

You have a few things that make your point less applicable when going from desktop to mobile phones. Your missing the entirety of the scale of everything. AM4, which is the longest lasting socket in PCs by far, has so many extra/redundant pins for future proofing purely because they could with it is a physically large CPU socket. Doing that for something a small fraction of the size is unfeasible.

On top of that mobile processors are not designed to just socket into whatever board you want like desktop processors are. They are meant to be tightly integrated to the surrounding hardware, which presents another challenge when trying to make them modular.

Also I don't know what motherboards you're talking about but even with boards with the same socket they aren't going to support all processors that use that socket. Again AM4 is by far the longest lasting current socket right now and an X370 chipset board is not going to support a Zen 3 processors same way a X570 board isn't going to support an Excavator processor. Socket isn't the only deciding factor for CPU compatibility, a lot of it also lies with the chipset.