8 ms·

Framework: Solving for Silicon Shortages

240 points by pimterry 5y ago

imperialdrive 5y ago
Felt like a legit update... Looking forward to putting these units up against the Surface line we currently deploy... I believe they have a good chance at crushing competition!
- wffurr 5y ago
  s/crushing competition/providing a great experience to their customers
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    That's how competition-crushing is done, ideally.
    - fabianhjr 5y ago
      Normally though competition crushing is done through anti-competitive practices. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Anti-competitive_practices https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Anti-competitive_practices
      - bscphil 5y ago
        Or, more charitably (?), marketing.
        dan-robertson 5y ago
        The theme of the comment thread is that companies in the past (example: Microsoft) got in serious trouble for talking about crushing the competition. While companies want to do better than the competition because it means more sales and more revenue, they are meant to do it by providing better products or services rather than by causing competitor companies to go out of business granting the survivor a monopoly, even if either motivation leads to the same outcome.
        bscphil 5y ago
        "providing better products or services" and "causing competitor companies to go out of business" are related, though, not two wholly separate ways of doing business. If you provide a better product or service at a better price point, you'll win more and more of the market for the product or service.
        Jensson 5y ago
        If you offer a targeted price reduction to unsustainable levels in all areas a competitor operates and says you do it to crush the competition then you will have a really bad time in court. If you however said that you did it to provide better services to those poor people then at least you have a fighting chance. 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.
gcoguiec 5y ago
That's a great way to communicate around an engineering change order/notice!
xyx0826 5y ago
TL;DR: Framework is switching its audio codec from Realtek ALC295 to Tempo 92HD95B. 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.
- jessikat 5y ago
  I'm especially excited for this as Realtek codec support, at least from looking at the Linux driver, has a substantial quirks layer. The datasheet right there on the page makes it quite likely that if it doesn't work out of the box with the generic codec driver in Haiku, much more likely to get it working. I do hope they don't switch back to the Realtek codec in the future.
  - xyx0826 5y ago
    Given that the Tempo codec works great as a feature parity replacement (which the Framework team anticipates), it’s quite likely they will stick with it. The Tempo do lack the ALC’s smart features but they couldn’t get the latter to work anyway...
    - ksec 5y ago
      I wonder how much more expensive is the Tempo chip? I assume it sit somewhere in between RealTek and Cirrus Logic?
mrfusion 5y ago
Is framework open source?
- Iolaum 5y ago
  Key selling point is that is fully repairable with schematics and spare parts available. It does support Linux as well. If you are talking about whether it is open hardware I am not sure.
- als0 5y ago
  No. They make computers using ordinary PC parts. But they are very Linux friendly and repairable.
- dathinab 5y ago
  No, but it's repairable and if you are a repair shop they do provide schematics for you allowing you to do "proper" repairs instead of just replacing large components. Also the dimensions/interface around there interface modules is open so anyone can freely produce new ones.
  - nikau 5y ago
    I'm not sure what the hype is around framework laptops and reparability - having looked at a teardown video they are the same design as my Lenovo only each module is labelled with a QR code. 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.
    - ben-schaaf 5y ago
      I wanted to look into this to see how they actually compare. A comparable thin-and-light laptop from Lenovo is the ThinkPad X13 (Gen 2). In the only manual I was able to find they have a small list of "Customer Replaceable Units" which is: * 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-replacement-videos-thinkpad-x13-gen-1-20t2-20t3-20uf-20ug 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-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x13-type-20t2-20t3/20t2/parts/display/compatible 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.
Drdrdrq 5y ago
So, when can we get these laptops in EU? Pretty please? :-)
- bloopernova 5y ago
  Only if you sell the fairphone in the USA :P
- phaer 5y ago
  Oh yes please! My x230 is aging...
- emsy 5y ago
  Seconded! A rough ETA would be appreciated since my MBP2013 is on it's last legs and I'm holding out for the Framework because I love the philosophy behind it.
- monopoledance 5y ago
  Supposedly until the “end of the year”, but I would really like an update on that. 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!
  - namibj 5y ago
    Yeah, throw in a universal charger and if necessary, provide a source for EU plug mains leads. German distributors Reichelt and ELV would probably be happy to help you out there.
- breakingcups 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm eagerly waiting
gfody 5y ago
they should make sound a module, then they could offer a high-end option with something like an akm ak4490 and users could go legacy free if they want
- nrp 5y ago
  We considered it! Early in architecture, we had the CODEC on the headphone jack daughterboard instead of on the mainboard. It introduced a bunch of interface complexity, so we dropped that. In retrospect, it would have prepared us well for this silicon crunch though.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Tiger lake can use cellhpone codecs with soundwire interface.
reacharavindh 5y ago
I don’t need my laptop right this moment. I am waiting with my wallet for a Ryzen 5000 series option here in Netherlands. Just saying here in case someone needs to know there are potential customers out here :-)
- pkulak 5y ago
  I'm not concerned with the chip. Anything modern is plenty for my needs. I'm waiting for a 3k screen. That's what I spend all day staring at.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    You won't catch me hunched over a laptop all day. I just need the screen for the few occasions where I am on the road or maybe in a meeting. Most of the time I will be docking my laptop. The ergonomics are just way better.
    - pkulak 5y ago
      Fair. I built a desktop for the first time in a decade over the pandemic, so I'm looking for something that will basically never be hooked in to an external monitor.
    - noisy_boy 5y ago
      This became more obvious to me working from home though I should have realized it earlier. I was already using an external display (27") - then switched from that to a 43" inch (with the 27" moving to the side in rotated-portrait mode). The productivity gain was day and night - being able to glance at a 2x4 grid of code is a big jump from constant Alt-Tab. My only regret is not buying it before the prices started going north on account of wfh being wide-spread.
- mfer 5y ago
  I wonder if they’ll do a Ryzen option anytime soon. Connecting displays and some of their modules (e.g. HDMI) appear to need thunderbolt. Ryzen doesn’t ship with that, yet.
greenwoman 5y ago
You'd have to be smoking crack to buy the framework laptop over the new MBP
baybal2 5y ago
I feel The Framework team is learning the "electronics manufacturing 101" the hard way. 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.
- fake-name 5y ago
  So much this. It's always some mixture between amusing and depressing seeing software people try hardware.
  - breakingcups 5y ago
    Is the Framework team originally a software team?
  - nikau 5y ago
    Engineering for manufacturing is a different skillset from even EE, for example a pick and place machine can only run so many reels of components, so sometimes its more economical to use multiple resistors instead of one as you can then get the board made on the smaller and cheaper machine.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Sounds like an optimization problem that can be solved in CAD software.
      - nikau 5y ago
        Like all things it comes with industry experience.
- nrp 5y ago
  Luckily we all went through 101, 201, and some grad courses in building and scaling hardware the hard way in our previous companies. If not for that, we probably wouldn't have been able to ship anything in 2021.
throwawaysea 5y ago
> Tempo picked up their CODEC and IP catalog including the 92HD95B from IDT, which in turn acquired it from SigmaTel, one of the great old audio silicon design companies. The CODEC happens to have the exact set of capabilities needed for the Framework Laptop and is fully supported in both Windows and Linux. 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.
- nrp 5y ago
  Yep, it should work the same in Ubuntu as it does in Windows. this is actually different than the Realtek CODEC, which did have some functionality that the Windows driver enabled that the Linux one didn't (like mic beamforming, though the beamforming didn't work very well anyway).
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Awesome. Thanks for the fast response! I love your work and am looking forward to what else you can disrupt in the future from an open computing and repairability perspective (smartphones please!).
cloudengineer94 5y ago
Framework is such an interesting project. Especially from the perspective of a Linux user, there is tons of potential here and I cannot wait to see their next generation laptops.

240 points by pimterry 5y ago

Felt like a legit update... Looking forward to putting these units up against the Surface line we currently deploy... I believe they have a good chance at crushing competition!

wffurr 5y ago
s/crushing competition/providing a great experience to their customers
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  That's how competition-crushing is done, ideally.
  - fabianhjr 5y ago
    Normally though competition crushing is done through anti-competitive practices. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Anti-competitive_practices https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Anti-competitive_practices
    - bscphil 5y ago
      Or, more charitably (?), marketing.
      - dan-robertson 5y ago
        The theme of the comment thread is that companies in the past (example: Microsoft) got in serious trouble for talking about crushing the competition. While companies want to do better than the competition because it means more sales and more revenue, they are meant to do it by providing better products or services rather than by causing competitor companies to go out of business granting the survivor a monopoly, even if either motivation leads to the same outcome.
        bscphil 5y ago
        "providing better products or services" and "causing competitor companies to go out of business" are related, though, not two wholly separate ways of doing business. If you provide a better product or service at a better price point, you'll win more and more of the market for the product or service.
        Jensson 5y ago
        If you offer a targeted price reduction to unsustainable levels in all areas a competitor operates and says you do it to crush the competition then you will have a really bad time in court. If you however said that you did it to provide better services to those poor people then at least you have a fighting chance. 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.

gcoguiec 5y ago

That's a great way to communicate around an engineering change order/notice!

xyx0826 5y ago

TL;DR: Framework is switching its audio codec from Realtek ALC295 to Tempo 92HD95B. 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.

jessikat 5y ago
I'm especially excited for this as Realtek codec support, at least from looking at the Linux driver, has a substantial quirks layer. The datasheet right there on the page makes it quite likely that if it doesn't work out of the box with the generic codec driver in Haiku, much more likely to get it working. I do hope they don't switch back to the Realtek codec in the future.
- xyx0826 5y ago
  Given that the Tempo codec works great as a feature parity replacement (which the Framework team anticipates), it’s quite likely they will stick with it. The Tempo do lack the ALC’s smart features but they couldn’t get the latter to work anyway...
  - ksec 5y ago
    I wonder how much more expensive is the Tempo chip? I assume it sit somewhere in between RealTek and Cirrus Logic?

mrfusion 5y ago

Is framework open source?

Iolaum 5y ago
Key selling point is that is fully repairable with schematics and spare parts available. It does support Linux as well. If you are talking about whether it is open hardware I am not sure.
als0 5y ago
No. They make computers using ordinary PC parts. But they are very Linux friendly and repairable.
dathinab 5y ago
No, but it's repairable and if you are a repair shop they do provide schematics for you allowing you to do "proper" repairs instead of just replacing large components. Also the dimensions/interface around there interface modules is open so anyone can freely produce new ones.
- nikau 5y ago
  I'm not sure what the hype is around framework laptops and reparability - having looked at a teardown video they are the same design as my Lenovo only each module is labelled with a QR code. 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.
  - ben-schaaf 5y ago
    I wanted to look into this to see how they actually compare. A comparable thin-and-light laptop from Lenovo is the ThinkPad X13 (Gen 2). In the only manual I was able to find they have a small list of "Customer Replaceable Units" which is: * 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-replacement-videos-thinkpad-x13-gen-1-20t2-20t3-20uf-20ug 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-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x13-type-20t2-20t3/20t2/parts/display/compatible 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.

Drdrdrq 5y ago

So, when can we get these laptops in EU? Pretty please? :-)

bloopernova 5y ago
Only if you sell the fairphone in the USA :P
phaer 5y ago
Oh yes please! My x230 is aging...
emsy 5y ago
Seconded! A rough ETA would be appreciated since my MBP2013 is on it's last legs and I'm holding out for the Framework because I love the philosophy behind it.
monopoledance 5y ago
Supposedly until the “end of the year”, but I would really like an update on that. 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!
- namibj 5y ago
  Yeah, throw in a universal charger and if necessary, provide a source for EU plug mains leads. German distributors Reichelt and ELV would probably be happy to help you out there.
breakingcups 5y ago
Yeah, I'm eagerly waiting

gfody 5y ago

they should make sound a module, then they could offer a high-end option with something like an akm ak4490 and users could go legacy free if they want

nrp 5y ago
We considered it! Early in architecture, we had the CODEC on the headphone jack daughterboard instead of on the mainboard. It introduced a bunch of interface complexity, so we dropped that. In retrospect, it would have prepared us well for this silicon crunch though.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Tiger lake can use cellhpone codecs with soundwire interface.

reacharavindh 5y ago

I don’t need my laptop right this moment. I am waiting with my wallet for a Ryzen 5000 series option here in Netherlands. Just saying here in case someone needs to know there are potential customers out here :-)

pkulak 5y ago
I'm not concerned with the chip. Anything modern is plenty for my needs. I'm waiting for a 3k screen. That's what I spend all day staring at.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  You won't catch me hunched over a laptop all day. I just need the screen for the few occasions where I am on the road or maybe in a meeting. Most of the time I will be docking my laptop. The ergonomics are just way better.
  - pkulak 5y ago
    Fair. I built a desktop for the first time in a decade over the pandemic, so I'm looking for something that will basically never be hooked in to an external monitor.
  - noisy_boy 5y ago
    This became more obvious to me working from home though I should have realized it earlier. I was already using an external display (27") - then switched from that to a 43" inch (with the 27" moving to the side in rotated-portrait mode). The productivity gain was day and night - being able to glance at a 2x4 grid of code is a big jump from constant Alt-Tab. My only regret is not buying it before the prices started going north on account of wfh being wide-spread.
mfer 5y ago
I wonder if they’ll do a Ryzen option anytime soon. Connecting displays and some of their modules (e.g. HDMI) appear to need thunderbolt. Ryzen doesn’t ship with that, yet.

greenwoman 5y ago

You'd have to be smoking crack to buy the framework laptop over the new MBP

baybal2 5y ago

I feel The Framework team is learning the "electronics manufacturing 101" the hard way. 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.

fake-name 5y ago
So much this. It's always some mixture between amusing and depressing seeing software people try hardware.
- breakingcups 5y ago
  Is the Framework team originally a software team?
- nikau 5y ago
  Engineering for manufacturing is a different skillset from even EE, for example a pick and place machine can only run so many reels of components, so sometimes its more economical to use multiple resistors instead of one as you can then get the board made on the smaller and cheaper machine.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Sounds like an optimization problem that can be solved in CAD software.
    - nikau 5y ago
      Like all things it comes with industry experience.
nrp 5y ago
Luckily we all went through 101, 201, and some grad courses in building and scaling hardware the hard way in our previous companies. If not for that, we probably wouldn't have been able to ship anything in 2021.

throwawaysea 5y ago

> Tempo picked up their CODEC and IP catalog including the 92HD95B from IDT, which in turn acquired it from SigmaTel, one of the great old audio silicon design companies. The CODEC happens to have the exact set of capabilities needed for the Framework Laptop and is fully supported in both Windows and Linux. 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.

nrp 5y ago
Yep, it should work the same in Ubuntu as it does in Windows. this is actually different than the Realtek CODEC, which did have some functionality that the Windows driver enabled that the Linux one didn't (like mic beamforming, though the beamforming didn't work very well anyway).
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Awesome. Thanks for the fast response! I love your work and am looking forward to what else you can disrupt in the future from an open computing and repairability perspective (smartphones please!).

cloudengineer94 5y ago

Framework is such an interesting project. Especially from the perspective of a Linux user, there is tons of potential here and I cannot wait to see their next generation laptops.