The socket has 2011 protruding pins that touch contact points on the underside of the processor.

The LGA 2011 socket uses QPI to connect the CPU to additional CPUs.

The memory controller and 40 PCI Express (PCIe) lanes are integrated into the CPU.

Still, different electrical signals, keying of the Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM) and integrating DDR4 memory controller rather than DDR3 prevent backward compatibility with older CPUs.

Intel CPU sockets use the so-called Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM) retention device to apply the specific amount of uniform pressure required to correctly hold the CPU against the socket interface.

As part of their design, ILMs have differently placed protrusions which are intended to mate with cutouts in CPU packagings.

These protrusions, also known as ILM keying, have the purpose of preventing installation of incompatible CPUs into otherwise physically compatible sockets, and preventing ILMs to be mounted with a 180-degree rotation relative to the CPU socket.

LGA 2011-v3 socket is used for Haswell-E and Haswell-EP CPUs, which were released in August and September 2014, respectively.

Square ILM is the standard type, while the narrow one is alternatively available for space-constrained applications.

[13][14] Information for the Intel X79 (for desktop) and C600 series (for workstations and servers, codenamed Romley[15]) chipsets is in the table below.

The Romley (EP) platform was delayed approximately one quarter, allegedly due to a SAS controller bug.

1 The X79 chipset allows for increasing the base clock (BCLK), Intel calls it CPU Strap, by 1.00×, 1.25×, 1.66× or 2.50×.

Server processors compatible with LGA 2011 socket are Sandy Bridge-EP, Ivy Bridge-E, Haswell-E and Broadwell-E. (threads) memory date

These processors are built on Broadwell-E architecture, 14nM lithography, 4-channel DDR4 ECC with up to 1.5TB and 40-lanes of PCI Express 3.0.