Framework announcements - Feb 25, 2025

Framework, the company that makes modular computers including the much lauded Framework 13 laptop announced a new mainboard for the laptop. a delightful new desktop mini PC and a hot new 12" portable / convertible laptop.

Framework is still a niche manufacturer. They are not an apple, dell, hp or even a microsoft. They've focused on upgradeable modular laptops and the framework 13 is a delightful machine that's really well put together. It's not old school industrial Thinkpad (those are still unique). However, these machines certainly deliver on the promise of a modular laptop.

The desktop is built on the AMD Strix Halo platform - an APU that promising competitive performance in CPU, gaming and AI tasks.

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I mean look at it. It's so adorable. Now, these machines are not as modular to be able to swap the ram alone out. It seems like Framework tried to make it happen but as with APUs, what you lose in terms of modularity, you can gain terms of memory bandwidth.

As the world moves towards the shared memory architecture, this can boost gaming and AI workloads quite effectively. They claim that the system is capable enough to handle the 70B model inferencing at realtime+ speeds, which is mighty impressive. My own setup is at about .3-.5 tokens / s for a 70B model. More inference time optimization please. <3

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I see a Noctua fan in there. All good signs for some of the continued customizability and future upgradability of the machine. I assume the goal would be to be able to replace either the board as a whole / the APU in future updates.

I look forward to the reviews of this machine.

The 12" ultraportable

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Personally, I do think this might be a delightful laptop for a school going child depending on the OS you put in there. I mean this could be perfect for running Chrome OS.