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0 pointsbhouston27d ago0 comments

> CPU, GPU, and even DRAM sitting on the same "die"

This is actually great. The laptop body stays the same and you swap out a small mini circuit board that has the CPU + GPU + DRAM on it.

This is the point of the Framework laptops. They are just unfortunately stuck with non-Apple parts and thus are slow / inefficient.

Maybe Qualcomm can make a motherboard for Framework high end laptops with their Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme ARM-based CPUs that are supposedly competitive with Apple's M4 offerings?

And then offer a cut down Qualcomm mobile phone CPU + GPU + DRAM offering for the Framework 12 so that it can compete on price/performance with the MacBook Neo?

I think you need to complete with Apple with the right equivalents.

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3 comments · 3 top-level

LarsDu8827d ago

Funny thing is, the circuit board on the Neo is barely smaller than that of the lowest end iPhone. The only remaining big cost item swappable item at that point is the display.

The benefits of modularity begin to get outweighed by the costs when 85% of the cost of the machine needs to be swapped out with each upgrade. For consumers, why would they not simply opt to spend the rest of the 15% to get a whole new computer?

3 more replies

borgel27d ago

Yeah, I think this is the right idea (or the most optimistic path towards M-series power/performance). If you wanted something fully/aggressively open you could do something like build a mainboard compatible with one of MNT's fully open SOMs like [1].

[1] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-rcore-rk3588-proc...

Danox26d ago

Qualcomm is basically at heart a patent troll company. They give nothing away and they double dip on their Frand patents they won’t support anything if they don’t have to good luck if you think Apple is bad Qualcomm is on a whole different level…

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