As recently as a few years ago, Robert was directly answering emails and shipping out signed prints of his BYTE covers. We have had some hanging in our office for inspiration. He set the best tone for what computing feels like.
There are still bright spots, but the space is so much larger it’s hard to find them. I still love all the companies that present at SC and Hot Chips.
One I like in particular is Cerebras. Wafer scale didn’t work when wafers were 3” but, somehow, they managed to make it work when they are the size of a manhole cover.
BYTE would run entire issues on the exploits of IBM in POWER and Z, on Intel and AMD’s latest tricks, and on the latest 250TB 2.5” SSDs.
Yes, Cerebras is very cool. But that sort of thing is also becoming the exception. I use the homepage of HN as a sort of thermometer, the trend seems to be towards 'more' rather than 'better'.
Same here. HN is an excellent way to take the pulse of our industry.
This "more over better" is a natural trend - a lot of money can be made for a relatively low effort. Cerebras did the Really Hard Thing, something many other brilliant companies and people failed at for decades. I remember Gene Amdahl failing at wafer-scale back when wafers were tiny.
That is incorrect. All of our laptops have modular, upgradable memory. Our Framework Desktop is a mini PC that does not because AMD’s Ryzen AI Max platform doesn’t support it. Regardless, we maximized modularity and reuseability on that product too by following PC standards. It uses a MiniITX form factor, standard 120mm fan, and FlexATX power supply.
We have open source documentation and CAD around the Mainboards to enable people to reuse them as single board computers or mini PCs after upgrading them out of their laptops. Even if the original owner of the Mainboard has no use for that, the functionality means it has resale value for others to use, reducing waste.
We’ve been able to hold the same price we had at launch because we had buffered enough component inventory before prices reached their latest highs. We will need to increase pricing to cover supplier cost increases though, as we recently did on DDR5 modules.
Note that the memory is on the board for Ryzen AI Max, not on the package (as it is for Intel’s Lunar Lake and Apple’s M-series processors) or on die (which would be SRAM). As noted in another comment, whether the memory is on the board, on a module, or on the processor package, they are all still coming from the same extremely constrained three memory die suppliers, so costs are going up for all of them.
Longer contracts are riskier. The benefit of having cheaper RAM when prices spike is not strong enough to outweigh the downside of paying too much for RAM when prices drop or stay the same. If you’re paying a perpetual premium on the spot price to hedge, then your competitors will have pricing power over you and will slowly drive you out of the market. The payoff when the market turns in your favor just won’t be big enough and you might not survive as a business long enough to see it. There’s also counterparty risk, if you hit a big enough jackpot your upside is capped by what would make the supplier insolvent.
All your competitors are in the same boat, so consumers won’t have options. It’s much better to minimize the risk of blowing up by sticking as closely to spot at possible. That’s the whole idea of lean. Consumers and governments were mad about supply chains during the pandemic, but companies survived because they were lean.
In a sense this is the opposite risk profile of futures contracts in trading/portfolio management, even though they share some superficial similarities. Manufacturing businesses are fundamentally different from trading.
They certainly have contracts in place that cover goods already sold. They do a ton of preorders which is great since they get paid before they have to pay their suppliers. Just like airlines trade energy futures because they’ve sold the tickets long before they have to buy the jet fuel.
If you’re Apple, maybe that works, in this case we’re seeing 400% increases in price, instead of your RAM you’ll be delivered a note to pay up or you’ll get your money back with interest and termination fees and the supplier is still net positive.
the risk is that such longer contracts would then lock you into a higher cost component for longer, if the price drops. Longer contracts only look good in hindsight if ram prices increased (unexpectedly).
Do they make DRAM? I thought they made compute chips mostly.
If I recall correctly, RAM is even more niche and specialized than the (already quite specialized) general chip manufacturing. The structure is super-duper regular, just a big grid of cells, so it is super-duper optimized.
They (GF) do not make DRAM. They might have an eDRAM process inherited from IBM, but it would not be competitive.
You’re correct that DRAM is a very specialized process. The bit cell capacitors are a trench type that is uncommon in the general industry, so the major logic fabs would have a fairly uphill battle to become competitive (they also have no desire to enter the DRAM market in general).
The permanent fix involves soldering stuff on the mainboard, which I don't have any prior experience. The RTC substitute module you mention is just the ML220 coin battery that will also eventually stop working.
I did this repair and it was not nearly as easy as you imply. The wire is extremely thin, and the pad on the motherboard is extremely small. I had to purchase special eye-wear in order to see what I was doing, in addition to a soldering iron.
It was and is totally wrong that Framework requires users to repair a component that was faulty from the factory. You should ship the laptops back to your facility and repair them, at your expense. At worst, offer a substantial discount on a motherboard replacement.
This experience is a big reason why I went from a strong Framework proponent to a strong detractor. You do not support your products, and users cannot trust you to do the right thing. You now bask in the idealistic haze of nerddom but your actions show that you're just a business for whom repairability is a sales strategy to justify premium prices.
The warranty suggests that Framework would "ship the laptops back to [their] facility and repair them, at [their] expense," as you said they should. Did that not happen while your warranty period was in effect?
The issue did not arise until after the warranty period expired. The manufacturing flaw drained the real-time clock battery which lasted about a year. Their first fix was to send a new battery; the second fix was a soldering job. I am not a lawyer, but this does not seem like it is legal. The manufacturing flaw was present from the beginning but was masked by the battery's charge.
I appreciate the response, but my suggestion would be to offer a mail-in service program so that users don't have to fiddle with potentially dangerous soldering (ideally Framework bearing the shipping costs or atleast subsidizing it).
Done! Thanks for coming here to read the tough hacker new comments. I really like what you're doing with Framework, and I hope you are able to keep iterating and improving.
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Update: Sorry, there is no mistake! The i7 order was my original pre-order, which I canceled. My order is correctly recorded.
It's funny. I think a lot of more software-y people just don't see the need for a lot of Framework features. I deal with a lot of hardware (as a hobbyist and a hardware engineer) and I've seen every USB standard connector in the last week.
I also own something like three different Framework products (16, 13 and Desktop) and gifted two more (13 and Desktop) to people. Really, apart from the fit issues on 16 spacers and perhaps the speakers, the only really unforgivable issue is the size of the expansion cards (too small for interesting hardware like a good LTE modem).
Software-y people also have a way of being deliberately and performatively obtuse about their technology choices. This person's proclamation about not using any USB-A peripherals hits the same as when they feign surprise that any non-luddite would still have a use for printers, scanners, and fax machines.
Perhaps because Framework users are a bit more geeky and are more likely to use older hardware that still has USB-A?
USB-A is like what DB9 was. Easy to use, easy to plug-in, used on most devices. But there comes a point in time where we move on to the next connector, which is USB-C.
Most of my hardware is younger than ten years and everything has USB-C. I had a night light with micro-USB still but that was one of the last devices with a legacy port.
I have a stash of USB keyboards and mice in my closet, gathered from various sources for free. They're all USB-A because they're like 15 years old. The SD card reader I got somewhere ages ago is USB-A. My Xbox 360 controller is USB-A. So I got a USB-A module. Shrug.
Hi it's me from the past. I daily drive a VGA screen and a USB-A hub that connects my USB-A mouse and USB-A keyboard. My µSD-card reader uses USB-A. Ethernet adapter (for when I need a second NIC) is also USB-A but it came with an adapter to C so I have a choice there. All USB sticks I've ever seen are A, as well as all external hard drives. My charging cables are predominantly USB-A to micro, and nowadays I also need C for my phone. It's a bit annoying to need that extra C charging cable everywhere after we had already standardized on micro (except for Apple), but at least there's one standard now (xkcd.com/927) after the current devices die
Edit: forgot the printer. I connect it via USB-A on demand. /edit.
My laptop (bought this year) charges via a DC barrel jack, afaik because USB-C doesn't deliver enough power for peak usage. Buying a little HDMI-VGA converter was a lot cheaper than throwing a perfectly good screen away. My keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals also simply still work, seems silly to replace them just to get a C variant when 700-1300€ laptops have 1 or 2 C ports and always 2 A ports (I happen to be up-to-date on that, at least, because I helped someone select a new laptop ereyesterday)
I don't know what I'd need more than one C port for but I'm very happy that there is more than one A port on my laptop. Add in the standard set of 3.5mm jack, HDMI, ethernet, card reader, and charging, and you're already at more ports than even the new Framework 16 can physically fit in its frame, let alone nerd ports like serial or a second ethernet port. I considered buying a double-priced Framework earlier this year for the linux support and upgradeability (I really support their goal and would pay that premium if it were a suitable system) but this is one of the main reasons it just doesn't work for me: I'm actually a power user that regularly uses these connections and more
> My laptop (bought this year) charges via a DC barrel jack, afaik because USB-C doesn't deliver enough power for peak usage
I've got a Dell 120W USB-C charger from a 2017 Dell laptop, and I think you can go up to 240W now.
Now the highest power is a bit of a compatibility nightmare. I also have a 60W framework charger but it will only charge the Dell at 15W because that's the maximum mode that both the Dell and Framework charger support in common.
But given the barrel connectors are usually only compatible with the exact laptop they're sold with, that's probably an improvement.
I got a couple of type-A cards for my AMD FW13 and generally keep one loaded in the laptop for connecting to random junk like flash drives, charging cables for all sorts of widgets (like my bike light or head lamp), etc. I get dramatically more use out of the type-C cards. And in the quite-rare cases where I really need all of the type-C ports, I'll just eject the type-A card and plug directly into the chassis without the interposer at all rather than carry an extra type-C with me.
That said, there have been a few things that have been a bit less than deluxe on my FW13:
- The touchpad mechanical click is just not that good. It is too sensitive to exact pressure and touch location and I find holding it down and dragging to be excessively difficult compared to all other touchpads I've ever used.
- The delete key seems to oxidize and needs a bunch of hard mashing to get it to become responsive. No, it's not sticky or dirty.
- The air intake on the bottom is highly prone to getting blocked, mostly by my legs.
- There's no BIOS option to turn down the brightness or disable altogether the charging status LEDs, and I find that when I travel and can't keep the laptop in a separate room that it's bright enough to interrupt sleep. I've taped over them, but the light leakage from other crevices is still sufficient to be at least mildly annoying. The translucent Ethernet adapter card also acts like a lightbulb.
- The laptop ramps its current consumption from type-C very quickly and seems like it overshoots its target a little bit, and so it is the only device I have that trips out the OCP on some of my bricks.
- There's no BIOS option to artificially limit the charging power, and so I often trip the OCP on aircraft if my battery is not fully charged before plugging in. I don't want to carry a secondary small brick just to use on planes.
- The LCD backlight uniformity and color quality are mediocre, but for my use case I just don't really care that much. For me, this is a portable technical productivity machine and not an art studio, so it doesn't matter.
- The LCD backlight intensity curve is pretty bad. I very-frequently want to have a brightness in-between the lowest and second-lowest settings. I would love to get more control at the bottom and less at the top. It feels like it's linear when it should be logarithmic.
- The speakers suck. So does the volume control. I very rarely go above 10% volume and frequently don't have sufficient control resolution at the bottom. Anything above about 14-16% volume causes something to distort and other stuff to rattle. Luckily I mostly don't consume media, so this is rarely a real problem. But it is truly atrocious.
All that said, I'm generally a pretty happy camper. I look forward to continued improvements from the company over the years.
Could you reach out to support about the delete key? There was a small window of time where a burr on a batch of Input Cover lattices resulted in wearing down the keyboard membrane in that spot: https://support.frame.work
Thanks for the feedback on LED brightness and airplane OCP. That should be something we can improve in firmware.
Thanks, I'll do that! I figured I've had the machine for a while and it was unlikely to be covered by warranty, so I didn't consider reaching out to support. Instead I assumed I'd buy a new keyboard if it ever annoyed me too much.
At some point I actually considered poking around the firmware and seeing about fixing up the PD behavior. But it never quite rose in priority above my many other projects.
I absolutely love that the embedded controller firmware and much of the motherboard schematics are available. It makes it possible to do these little projects should I gather the gumption. That, plus easy and reasonably priced replacement parts availability and easy OS compatibility, are why I got the Framework.
A note to other folks. Don't bother asking customer service about this. They want you to record videos, as if that's a productive use of your time or required to support a product.
As soon as a CSR asks me to record a video, I write off the brand. Maybe Gen Z will tolerate that, but I'm too old for that nonsense.
The actual touch part of the FW touchpad, including tap to click, works just fine. I might be a weirdo for liking mechanical click for dragging (and I dislike the Macbook tactile fakery; it does not fool my finger).
