Land grid array

[2] The grid elements found in use can be e.g. circular, triangular or other polygonal shapes and might have even different sizes.

In contrast with a BGA, land grid array packages in non socketed configurations have no balls, and use flat contacts which are soldered directly to the PCB.

These early uses predate the availability of modern LGA sockets, and instead used land grid arrays on both the processor package and the motherboard.

Compared to PGA CPUs, LGA reduces the likelihood of the chip being damaged either before or during installation as there are no pins that can be accidentally bent.

[4] While LGA sockets have been in use as early as 1996 by the MIPS R10000, HP PA-8000, and Sun UltraSPARC II[5] processors, the interface did not gain mainstream use until Intel introduced their LGA platform, starting with the 5x0 and 6x0 sequence Pentium 4 (Prescott) in 2004.

AMD offered the Athlon 64 FX series on socket 1207FX through ASUS's L1N64-SLI WS motherboards.

Like Intel, AMD decided to use LGA sockets for their higher pin densities, as a 1944-pin PGA would simply be too large for most motherboards.