5 ms·

no, you tell us why you think the next ten years are going to be different than the last thirty

endgame 1y ago
One possible reason: to achieve the performance improvements, we are seeing more integrated and soldered-together stuff, limiting later upgrades. The Framework Desktop from the modular, user-upgradeable laptop company, has soldered-on memory because they had to "choose two" between memory bus performance, system stability, and user-replaceable memory modules. If the product succeeds and the market starts saying that this is acceptable for desktops, I could see more and more systems going that way to get either maximum performance (in workstations) or space/power optimisation (e.g. N100-based systems). Then other manufacturers not optimising for either of these things might start shipping soldered-together systems just to get the BoM costs down.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  That’s a laptop. It’s soldered for space constraints. There are high speed memory module form factors. It just adds thickness, cost, expense, and they’re not widely available yet. Most use cases need the high speed RAM attached to the GPU, though. Desktop CPUs are still on 2-channel memory and it’s fine. Server configs go to 12-channel or more, but desktop hasn’t even begun to crack the higher bandwidth because it’s not all that useful compared to spending the money on a GPU that will blow the CPU away anyway.
  - bestouff 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure the "Framework Desktop" is a desktop, not a laptop.
  - pja 1y ago
    The Framework Desktop is not a laptop. The clue is in the name... https://frame.work/gb/en/desktop https://frame.work/gb/en/desktop
- scns 1y ago
  > The Framework Desktop from the modular, user-upgradeable laptop company, has soldered-on memory because they had to "choose two" between memory bus performance, system stability, and user-replaceable memory modules. No need to pick on Framework here, AMD could not make the chip work with replaceable memory. How many GPUs with user replaceable (slotted) memory are there? Zero snark intended
blackoil 1y ago
If the processor comes with builtin GPU, NPU and RAM will you be really building the system
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Yes, as that's already the case with phones. There is more to a phone than the SOC.
  - fourthark 1y ago
    Who builds phones?
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      It's mostly factory workers. But hobbyists could do so too if they wanted. Most people want to just buy something that works out of the box so it's not a popular option.
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  Sure. Building a PC already is barely building anything. You buy a handful of components and click them into each other.
  - navigate8310 1y ago
    A lot of flexibility still exists
  - lizknope 1y ago
    While that is mostly true there is a large variety of motherboards. It took me a while to find something with the right SATA and PCIE slots that I wanted. But after that it is just using a screwdriver and some cable ties.
- danparsonson 1y ago
  RAM? Are we expecting on-chip RAM any time soon?
whatever1 1y ago
The only market for desktops is gaming. Hence nvidia will just slap a cpu on their board and use the unified memory model to sell you an all in one solution. Essentially a desktop console. Maybe some modularization will survive for slow storage. But other than that demand for modular desktops is dead. Cases will probably survive since gamers love flashy rigs.
- barrkel 1y ago
  There are a handful of professional uses for a workstation that are hard to beat with a laptop. If you're compiling code, you generally want as much concurrency as you can get, as well as great single core speed when the task parallelism runs out. There aren't really any laptops with high core counts, and even when you have something with horsepower, you run into thermal limits. You can try and make do with remoting into a machine with more cores, but then you're not really using your laptop, it might as well be a Chromebook.
  - whatever1 1y ago
    All of these can be done much better on the cloud (I can spawn as big of a machine as my pocket can afford). And with today’s tooling (vs code & jetbrains remote development) you don’t even notice that you develop on a remote machine and not your local. So the desktop developer market is for those who are not willing to use cloud. And this is a very small minority. (FYI I am not endorsing cloud over local development, I just state where the market is)
    - tekne 1y ago
      Much of my PhD thesis was/is done traveling in places with poor, poor Internet. Currently on my laptop in rural Calabria, where I pull a blazing fast 60 kbps, sometimes. Would be very irritating waiting for the compiler/theorem prover to go brr, remotely… I can hardly edit a Google doc out here! This doesn’t contradict your minority point, but it really does make me appreciate local-first.
      - 1y ago

One possible reason: to achieve the performance improvements, we are seeing more integrated and soldered-together stuff, limiting later upgrades. The Framework Desktop from the modular, user-upgradeable laptop company, has soldered-on memory because they had to "choose two" between memory bus performance, system stability, and user-replaceable memory modules. If the product succeeds and the market starts saying that this is acceptable for desktops, I could see more and more systems going that way to get either maximum performance (in workstations) or space/power optimisation (e.g. N100-based systems). Then other manufacturers not optimising for either of these things might start shipping soldered-together systems just to get the BoM costs down.

Aurornis 1y ago
That’s a laptop. It’s soldered for space constraints. There are high speed memory module form factors. It just adds thickness, cost, expense, and they’re not widely available yet. Most use cases need the high speed RAM attached to the GPU, though. Desktop CPUs are still on 2-channel memory and it’s fine. Server configs go to 12-channel or more, but desktop hasn’t even begun to crack the higher bandwidth because it’s not all that useful compared to spending the money on a GPU that will blow the CPU away anyway.
- bestouff 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure the "Framework Desktop" is a desktop, not a laptop.
- pja 1y ago
  The Framework Desktop is not a laptop. The clue is in the name... https://frame.work/gb/en/desktop https://frame.work/gb/en/desktop
scns 1y ago
> The Framework Desktop from the modular, user-upgradeable laptop company, has soldered-on memory because they had to "choose two" between memory bus performance, system stability, and user-replaceable memory modules. No need to pick on Framework here, AMD could not make the chip work with replaceable memory. How many GPUs with user replaceable (slotted) memory are there? Zero snark intended

blackoil 1y ago

If the processor comes with builtin GPU, NPU and RAM will you be really building the system

charcircuit 1y ago
Yes, as that's already the case with phones. There is more to a phone than the SOC.
- fourthark 1y ago
  Who builds phones?
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    It's mostly factory workers. But hobbyists could do so too if they wanted. Most people want to just buy something that works out of the box so it's not a popular option.
hombre_fatal 1y ago
Sure. Building a PC already is barely building anything. You buy a handful of components and click them into each other.
- navigate8310 1y ago
  A lot of flexibility still exists
- lizknope 1y ago
  While that is mostly true there is a large variety of motherboards. It took me a while to find something with the right SATA and PCIE slots that I wanted. But after that it is just using a screwdriver and some cable ties.
danparsonson 1y ago
RAM? Are we expecting on-chip RAM any time soon?

whatever1 1y ago

The only market for desktops is gaming. Hence nvidia will just slap a cpu on their board and use the unified memory model to sell you an all in one solution. Essentially a desktop console. Maybe some modularization will survive for slow storage. But other than that demand for modular desktops is dead. Cases will probably survive since gamers love flashy rigs.

barrkel 1y ago
There are a handful of professional uses for a workstation that are hard to beat with a laptop. If you're compiling code, you generally want as much concurrency as you can get, as well as great single core speed when the task parallelism runs out. There aren't really any laptops with high core counts, and even when you have something with horsepower, you run into thermal limits. You can try and make do with remoting into a machine with more cores, but then you're not really using your laptop, it might as well be a Chromebook.
- whatever1 1y ago
  All of these can be done much better on the cloud (I can spawn as big of a machine as my pocket can afford). And with today’s tooling (vs code & jetbrains remote development) you don’t even notice that you develop on a remote machine and not your local. So the desktop developer market is for those who are not willing to use cloud. And this is a very small minority. (FYI I am not endorsing cloud over local development, I just state where the market is)
  - tekne 1y ago
    Much of my PhD thesis was/is done traveling in places with poor, poor Internet. Currently on my laptop in rural Calabria, where I pull a blazing fast 60 kbps, sometimes. Would be very irritating waiting for the compiler/theorem prover to go brr, remotely… I can hardly edit a Google doc out here! This doesn’t contradict your minority point, but it really does make me appreciate local-first.
    - 1y ago