Framework: Solving for Silicon Shortages
frame.work
frame.work
Considering how well their first machines are received, how outstanding their public image holds, I am sure they will not have troubles hiring passionate talent. Management, values, making an arguably thoughtful and desirable product, … seems like a dream job, when you work in that niche, no?
There are rumors that future Ryzens will have Thunderbolt but we'll need to wait for those then get into motherboards that are for this. It won't be right away.
Tbh. I tend to disable thunderbolt always due to security concerns which have more then once shown to be well founded.
While I don’t own a Framework I welcome this change and find it quite interesting, partly because it seems like every laptop and PC maker these days are putting an ALC chip on their boards. You also don’t see computer companies announcing “we’re ditching chip X for chip Y” often and this is very informative transparency.
It feels like Realtek puts a lot of red tape around its chips. Most notably, it’s very hard to look up a datasheet for an ALC chip unless it’s a very popular part. Realtek also seem to only provide stock and support to their biggest customers like Dell and Gigabyte, because it sounds like Framework struggled to secure stock, probably from a one-off source, for their first batches and couldn’t get in touch with Realtek to implement the Smart DSP feature.
The Tempo chip on their other hand is much more open. The datasheet is right on the product page, and the chip has first-class Linux support. In the integrated sound card market where Realtek is to codec as Clorox is to bleach, I welcome attempts to diversify the market share.
Wrt. to letting them being designed and produced by TSCM and similar, yes.
But if you wan to do production "from scratch" it's a complete different matter, even if the chip is "simple" you still need a proper chip production method, which is never simple.
There is a reason why we only have very few fabs today, even through there is a lot of demand for chips using "older" production methods (>28nm). It's often still not profitable to produce them even for companies which have all the necessary patents, know-how and even some older existing machinery. A thing the care industry was hit hard by.
I do hope they don't switch back to the Realtek codec in the future.
The Tempo do lack the ALC’s smart features but they couldn’t get the latter to work anyway...
I have no idea how expensive the Realtek chip is or anything else to put that in context, though.
(I probably am using some or all of the technical words above incorrectly, but I am going mostly from memory and hope to be corrected as I don’t know much about hardware design or manufacturing.)
Thanks. If those 2500 for $4.29 are "current" rate. ( Chip Shortage ) Then it should be cheaper than current Realtek. But in terms of normal pricing that is quite a bit more.
Would be quite pissed, if they’d sorry out mid December, as I am somewhat holding off for them.
For cultural differences, I can see a comparatively huge market in Europe. But I am sure the logistics are considerable. For what it’s worth: Framework, many people here would prefer the US keyboard layout for programming; there is a market for what you got already, no need to wait for QWERTZ, if hardware localization is an issue!
I guess this change in wording is why we mostly stopped seeing companies taken to court over anti-competitive practices in USA. Since we reworded all the "crush the competition" to "provide better services" the courts are now unable to tell when companies are behaving in an anti-competitive manner.
Does having a "CODEC" that is supported by Linux mean that the entire audio chip that is being substituted is supported by Linux? I'm not sure if I am asking the right question, but I'm trying to avoid ordering a Framework laptop that has one of these new chips and somehow doesn't work out of the box with Ubuntu as expected.
Having shipped at least 20 devices in my life now, I can say most of the time you manufacture what you can, and not what you want.
For me most projects start not as a piece of a napkin genius startup idea, but a walk around electronics markets, distributors, thinking what is a good deal now, and if getting all parts together in given time is real, and feasible for one project, or another.
Want to try doing assembly somewhere else?
It's always some mixture between amusing and depressing seeing software people try hardware.
It does support Linux as well.
If you are talking about whether it is open hardware I am not sure.
Also the dimensions/interface around there interface modules is open so anyone can freely produce new ones.
Lenovo already have full service manuals online which have explicit detail of replacement process and spare parts are cheap and readily available.
Yes Framework openly offer schematics, but my Lenovo has 3 year warranty, and once that is over its doubtful its economically viable to perform component level repair on the motherboard.
- It not always being easy to get parts even through it's a very wide spread laptop.
- Lenovo not providing schematics for repair shops.
- Lenovo locking downs components with DRM.
- Lenovo acting against 3rd party manufacturers of components.
- officially only very few parts are CRU
- USB ports are soldered to the motherboard (a problem framework sidesteps with there interface modules as there is no physical stress in the inner ports they connect too)
- all the Lenovo it's repairable only really applies to their ThinkPad lineup, excluding variants like X or Yoga, but frameworks laptop is somewhat competing with exactly that X variants I think.
For any framework part you can easily get the equivalent Lenovo part from ebay in much larger quantities.
> Lenovo not providing schematics for repair shops.
After warranty is up its likely not cost effective to repair at component level.
Also full schematics are available on 3rd party sites such as alisaler.com.
> Lenovo locking downs components with DRM.
The radio card whitelist is for FCC compliance - the whitelisted cards wont let you run frequencies outside your home country. Agree they should just do like other manufacturers and not worry about it.
- Lenovo acting against 3rd party manufacturers of components.
Not sure what you are referring to here.
- officially only very few parts are CRU
But practically they are plentiful.
- USB ports are soldered to the motherboard (a problem framework sidesteps with there interface modules as there is no physical stress in the inner ports they connect too)
This also makes the laptop larger.
> all the Lenovo it's repairable only really applies to their ThinkPad lineup, excluding variants like X or Yoga, but frameworks laptop is somewhat competing with exactly that X variants I think.
So vote with your wallet and buy a thinkpad.
* Keyboard * Any M.2 parts * The cover assembly
And that's it. No battery, display, laptop body, CPU, ports, etc. From what it says in the manual this seems to be part of their warranty process, not for general repair.
> If you intend on installing a CRU, Lenovo will ship the CRU to you. CRU information and replacement instructions are shipped with your product and are available from Lenovo at any time upon request. You might be required to return the defective part that is replaced by the CRU.
After some more digging it looks like they do actually have repair guides for most if not all of the parts:
https://support.lenovo.com/au/en/solutions/ht510477-removal-...
And they do seem to list all the parts for that laptop:
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/au/en/products/laptops-and-netb...
But the only things I'm able to actually order are the SSD and the power brick.
So it looks like the framework is a fair bit easier to repair (no popping key caps to unscrew the keyboard for instance), makes all their parts easily available (or at least it's easy to get notified when they become available), doesn't have 20 different versions for each part, but also doesn't offer the same kind of warranty and services that lenovo does.