Love to see when the modular design idea spawns other ideas for modules like this. Especially love it whenever a modular/repairable/etc design is successful. There have been many half-assed...
Love to see when the modular design idea spawns other ideas for modules like this.
Especially love it whenever a modular/repairable/etc design is successful. There have been many half-assed attempts by larger corps at this kind of thing and they always end up as some CES prototype and go nowhere.
For once, a company, Framework, is actually making it work.
Yeah, maybe the title can be edited to include the dot in M.2… That said, you got me thinking now with Asahi Linux being a thing – couldn’t Framework, hypothetically*, buy like M-series Mac Minis,...
Yeah, maybe the title can be edited to include the dot in M.2…
That said, you got me thinking now with Asahi Linux being a thing – couldn’t Framework, hypothetically*, buy like M-series Mac Minis, extract the motherboard/chipset, and ship all that ARM with Linux?
*I’m not saying this makes financial or “moral” (given the company’s goals otherwise) sense for them to do, I’m just a bit curious about the technical aspect.
Re: title, my bad. But what's stopping Framework from using another ARM processor, similar to how they're operating with RISC V? Raspberry would probably be interested in a bespoke Framework...
Re: title, my bad.
But what's stopping Framework from using another ARM processor, similar to how they're operating with RISC V? Raspberry would probably be interested in a bespoke Framework Motherboard or something with a CM5 in it.
Hm, I have pretty much no clue about the space, but I was under the impression most ARM chips so far (outside of Apple’s) were more in the mobile device class in terms of performance (as in,...
Hm, I have pretty much no clue about the space, but I was under the impression most ARM chips so far (outside of Apple’s) were more in the mobile device class in terms of performance (as in, benchmark scores etc. – of course their wattage is amazingly low).
If my knowledge there isn’t outdated (I’m classifying the Qualcomms for MS Surfaces under the mobile category :P), maybe that’s what’s holding them up for a “workhorse” laptop?
If by "Qualcomms for MS Surfaces" you mean the Snapdragon X Elite chips, they're as capable as modern laptop chips by Intel & AMD. The main blocker at the moment seems to be in Arm64 support for...
If by "Qualcomms for MS Surfaces" you mean the Snapdragon X Elite chips, they're as capable as modern laptop chips by Intel & AMD. The main blocker at the moment seems to be in Arm64 support for software, and low uptake / sales. The X Elite is a 12 core device with a boost clock of some 4Ghz.
Thanks for the correction (and the chipset’s name :P). That’s impressive! And good to hear that Apple doesn’t have the sole competitive offering in that market segment. Admittedly, it’s been a...
Thanks for the correction (and the chipset’s name :P). That’s impressive! And good to hear that Apple doesn’t have the sole competitive offering in that market segment. Admittedly, it’s been a fair while since I last checked in on that topic, and back then I recall reading about some performance complaints (in addition to the relative lack of software), although I couldn’t quantify that/set it in relation to happy users, of course.
Although, as someone who has ran an ARM-based Linux VPS for about a year now with little to no issues in that regard, I’d imagine the lack of software to be mostly confined to Desktop/GUI applications, and probably moreso still under Windows than Linux?
There's certainly a disparity between the two operating systems when it comes to architecture compatibility, yes. The biggest issue for Linux appears to currently be one of device support in the...
There's certainly a disparity between the two operating systems when it comes to architecture compatibility, yes. The biggest issue for Linux appears to currently be one of device support in the kernel- as far as I understand it a number of groups (including Qualcomm themselves) are working on the problem of shipping multiple (or overlaid) device tree blobs and having Linux select the correct one for the current system (see- https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/request-for-comment-about-shipping-multiple-devicetrees--identif). The other issue is one of distributing closed-source binaries for hardware support. It's getting there slowly.
Love to see when the modular design idea spawns other ideas for modules like this.
Especially love it whenever a modular/repairable/etc design is successful. There have been many half-assed attempts by larger corps at this kind of thing and they always end up as some CES prototype and go nowhere.
For once, a company, Framework, is actually making it work.
Damn. From the title, for just a moment, I thought "Apple silicon?!"
Yeah, maybe the title can be edited to include the dot in M.2…
That said, you got me thinking now with Asahi Linux being a thing – couldn’t Framework, hypothetically*, buy like M-series Mac Minis, extract the motherboard/chipset, and ship all that ARM with Linux?
*I’m not saying this makes financial or “moral” (given the company’s goals otherwise) sense for them to do, I’m just a bit curious about the technical aspect.
@cfabbro sorry to ping you but any chance of the title change. I got confused by this one as well.
Fixed
Re: title, my bad.
But what's stopping Framework from using another ARM processor, similar to how they're operating with RISC V? Raspberry would probably be interested in a bespoke Framework Motherboard or something with a CM5 in it.
Hm, I have pretty much no clue about the space, but I was under the impression most ARM chips so far (outside of Apple’s) were more in the mobile device class in terms of performance (as in, benchmark scores etc. – of course their wattage is amazingly low).
If my knowledge there isn’t outdated (I’m classifying the Qualcomms for MS Surfaces under the mobile category :P), maybe that’s what’s holding them up for a “workhorse” laptop?
If by "Qualcomms for MS Surfaces" you mean the Snapdragon X Elite chips, they're as capable as modern laptop chips by Intel & AMD. The main blocker at the moment seems to be in Arm64 support for software, and low uptake / sales. The X Elite is a 12 core device with a boost clock of some 4Ghz.
Thanks for the correction (and the chipset’s name :P). That’s impressive! And good to hear that Apple doesn’t have the sole competitive offering in that market segment. Admittedly, it’s been a fair while since I last checked in on that topic, and back then I recall reading about some performance complaints (in addition to the relative lack of software), although I couldn’t quantify that/set it in relation to happy users, of course.
Although, as someone who has ran an ARM-based Linux VPS for about a year now with little to no issues in that regard, I’d imagine the lack of software to be mostly confined to Desktop/GUI applications, and probably moreso still under Windows than Linux?
There's certainly a disparity between the two operating systems when it comes to architecture compatibility, yes. The biggest issue for Linux appears to currently be one of device support in the kernel- as far as I understand it a number of groups (including Qualcomm themselves) are working on the problem of shipping multiple (or overlaid) device tree blobs and having Linux select the correct one for the current system (see- https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/request-for-comment-about-shipping-multiple-devicetrees--identif). The other issue is one of distributing closed-source binaries for hardware support. It's getting there slowly.