at a guess it’s because the idea of microsoft being responsible for anything ‘security’ related is laughable, based on their track record with windows and related technologies (IE, activex, com etc)
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I don’t know about others but, at least for me, I don’t care so much about those because any Apple product as well as Android as a whole are kind of “non-starters” anyway.
In other words, even if you removed the black-boxes from those products, that’s only one of many many problems on those platforms to the point that it’s not even worth bothering with the aforementioned platforms.
For me, the main issue with Pluton is just that I was looking towards specifically RDNA2-powered APUs for possibly at least one if not multiple future Linux-powered PC and, it being the first AMD chip with USB4 means it’s also the first AMD chip that’d make sense in the Framework laptop.
…but it seems unwise to be getting something with Microsoft “security” hardware for a Linux-focused PCs, whether that be a desktop or a Framework or what-not, especially since I don’t really need the performance benefits provided by RDNA2 (they’d be nice however, but not required - hence why I’m using integrated graphics in the first place).
It’s just that, since I keep my PCs for a long long time, having an upgrade path is very useful - but the 5700G is already at the end of the road for AM4 APUs. And since I do keep my PCs for so long (my personal PC is heading towards 8 years old), it’s really feature-set that I’m more concerned about since, especially on GPUs, I’ve run into the issue of my iGPU not supporting some feature or what-not but, if it’s the last APU generation on a socket, then buying a used newer APU isn’t an option.
Now I’m wondering if the rumored “Monet” 12nm 4core Zen3+RDNA2 will lack Pluton as it’s supposedly bog-standard Zen3 and not Zen3+…
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I come here every few days to check if there’s any AMD framework news. 6000 series AMD Framework would be the dream machine for me (and a surface studio like screen/form factor with pen but not holding my breath for that for a while at least)
If there are no news in the next few months I think I might have to settle with Surface studio laptop as my next upgrade because of the form factor and keep my framework dreams for the next upgrade cycle in a few years.
What could alternatively sway me would be an announcement that AMD is in the works and when the AMD motherboard comes I could upgrade the current FW with it rather than having to get an AMD specific Framework.
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For AMD option in the market and if I have to pick Surface studio. I would rather get a Steam deck instead
Well, of course… The pen input is very important for me for the type of work that I do while I’m on the road and not on the desktop workstation.
Two drawbacks (aside from price) for Surface studio is you can’t upgrade it and they’re not as powerful as I want them to be. So, if I can get an upgradeable laptop with the specs I want, then I will concede to lugging around a wacom tablet with it.
@David_Tan - apples and oranges. Steam deck looks great but good luck getting any VFX work done on it… But you do you friend
Now I REALLY want an AMD option : )
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Just a topic to praise Ryzen 6000. It’s absolutely amazing. Oh the wonders that competition brings. A few YouTube videos on it now. RDNA2 Graphics seem to be 2x as powerful as Iris Xe on the 6900HX. Otherwise it’s also far more power efficient than 12th Gen. What do you think about it?
Edit: This post was moved to AMD CPUs please, even though it is NOT supposed to be a post pleading Framework to add CPUs, this was just a genuine question about what people of the community thought of the new CPUs revealed.
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I try to think as little as possible about it, now that I have an 11th gen Intel system on its way to me that I wouldn’t want to upgrade for a while. Might be a blessing in disguise though, because wouldn’t I drool over Ryzen 7000 in some months time if I gave in to these feelings?
This makes me remember all the buzz around Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000 that was instantly done away with once the Slytherin team all got brand new Nimbus 2001’s.
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The ryzen 6000 series seem perfect for laptops like the 13 inch Framework. The power efficiency is going to be very important, as the framework laptop, doesn’t have the best cooling or battery. Another great reason for a ryzen version.
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Yeah! Alder Lake is looking very battery intensive!
Ryzen 6000 is Zen 3+, not Zen 4. But it does have USB4 with all the Thunderbolt 3 capabilities. It would be a fine choice for the next generation Framework motherboard.
As for the 5800H beating the CPUs in the current Framework, of course it does – that’s an 8C/16T processor rather than 4C/8T. Alder Lake vs Ryzen 6000 will be a closer competition in processor performance, though the RDNA2 iGPU in Ryzen 6000 will blow away Intel.
Alder Lake can use a lot of power if you let it; the desktop parts in particular are going to be power hogs, just like all recent high end Intel desktop parts. But it also performs well in the power envelope of the Framework.
Not to go beating a dead horse, but I feel that’ll only be the case if Framework has made farther progress on open-source firmware since Framework has a major Linux user-base and focus as well as a general overall company philosophy that is the exact opposite of locked-down black boxes - especially ones that are made and designed by what is effectively a “competitor” (to put it lightly) for many of Framework’s users.
To put my concerns another way, regardless of its improbability, would people be OK with the idea of a future Framework laptop that uses an Apple M1 CPU?
If it had freed firmware and didn’t have the ghastly SSD performance that apparently ARM MacBooks have, then yes. I’m not so hung up on soldered RAM and SSD’s. So long as schematics and parts are made available to third party repair shops, I should in this scenario be able to receive an affordable repair. But seeing as none of those factors would likely be true…then obviously no.
Which is what I’m getting at here since, if the Phoronix forums are to be believed, then a lot of Linux enthusiasts have a less-than-favorable opinion towards Microsoft to put it nicely (for the not-so-nice stuff, just go read this Phoronix forum thread yourself).
So up until January 3rd I thought I was all-in on a theoretical Ryzen 6000 Framework Laptop, but on January 4th it became obvious that I was really all-in on a Framework Laptop with open firmware more-so than one specifically powered by AMD.
In other words, the announcement of Ryzen 6000 made me realize more-so where my interests lie - with Framework more-so than AMD (and may have been part of my motivation to stop “lurking” and actually create a forum account).
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Sad but true that Intel has the money to pay for the development work and AMD simply doesn’t feel compelled to respond in kind. I don’t know much about Pluton although I am not particularly happy about the Intel ME and adding another black box doesn’t thrill me. I will say that I’m pissed that AMD only deigned to grace their APU’s with RDNA2 because Intel is only now kicking them into high gear on iGPU’s. It’s the same garbage Intel did with 14nm++++ for all those years. The hypocrisy is staggering.
So as a hardware person, I feel the need to address that AMD’s focus on Vega for all previous Zen-based APUs makes sense for several reasons.
#1 there was only one generation of GPU architecture between Vega and RDNA2, that being RDNA1. And I recall RDNA1 being admitted by engineers themselves as almost being more like “incomplete RDNA2”.
#2 Tying into RDNA1 being “incomplete RDNA2”, this also makes sense why the consoles and even the Steam Deck all use RDNA2 graphics - because that’s the actual complete design of that given architecture. This means that, timing-wise, Ryzen 5000 APUs may have been the hypothetical earliest that it could have been implemented. Well, except that…
#3 AMD’s desktop product cadence follows something like 14-15 months (not including what seems to have been a bit of an “aborted arc” for Zen3D and Zen4 now rumored to be coming earlier than previously expected), but their mobile product cadence is shorter at only around 12-13 months, so it makes sense that they have to do an almost Intel-like tick-tock in terms of where to prioritize development, and previously the CPU architecture were of much more importance. But with Ryzen 6000 power consumption become the major focus (Zen3+ supposedly has no increase in IPC…but of course, better power management means higher clocks which means better CPU performance anyway), and the updated GPU is actually a big part of that since more performance-per-watt means, for the same task, you consume less power. And video decoding is something part of the GPU and video playback is obviously a very important aspect of battery life.
#4. You’ll notice that all RDNA2 products are at least DDR5 which leads me to believe that, at the architectural level, it does not even support DDR4. And if they added support for that, then it’d end up of course requiring more time to design and we already established that their mobile products have a shorter cadence. And of course, one key point of DDR5 is that it uses less voltage and therefore power than DDR4 and, as mentioned, power consumption was a big focus of Ryzen 6000. Tying into this is the rumored 12nm+ 4core Zen3+RDNA2 APU that is looking to launch later this year, my guess as a new Athlon for along-side Ryzen 7000 on AM5, and AM5 of course uses DDR5.
#5 Supposedly Van Gogh was actually supposed to come out around the same time as the consoles (late 2020/early 2021) which ties into what I said in #3 whereby that design as well as the consoles put development focus on the GPU aspect rather than the CPU, hence why they all have Zen2 cores despite Zen3 mobile launching just a couple of months later. In other words, AMD only had the time and/or man-power to design either Zen2+RDNA2 (i.e. old CPU + new iGPU) or Zen3+Vega (i.e. new CPU + old iGPU). But if the new iGPU wasn’t even designed to work with DDR4 memory, then it was possibly a bit premature for that design to show up anyway…
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@NM64 even if RDNA2 wasn’t possible because of DDR4 incompatibility, as you yourself noted, there was RDNA before that and regardless of how “incomplete” it was, it did offer significant performance-per-watt improvements over Vega. Those benefits would have mattered to laptop users immensely, regardless of performance gains.
Perhaps I’m just wearing my tin-foil hat too tightly but all this seems awfully convenient timing as Intel pumps money into their nascent graphics division
But there isn’t even an integrated iGPU version of RDNA1. You can’t just slap desktop RDNA1 onto a CPU and call it a day as it basically shares the same memory controller as the CPU, and the memory controller was brand-spanking new on Zen2 while Zen3 uses the exact same memory controller as Zen2.
I’m guessing you’re also not aware that AMD uses leap-frogging teams, and supposedly a lot of man-power kept being diverted from Raja’s Vega team over to the console RDNA2 team. And surely you’ve noticed who the head of Intel’s graphics is, and it’s no secret that he brought a decent amount of people with him (if you payed attention to the hype and marketing before Vega’s desktop launch, you may have noticed the odd similarities in overall tone to Intel’s own graphics marketing in the last year or two, and it’s no accident that Chris Hook was/is the head of marketing for both).
Heck there was even a, at the time, unbelievable rumor posted by Kyle Bennett on HardOCP that AMD’s graphics department wanted to become it’s own entity again (e.g. back to ATI) and then merge with Intel. This was literally (not figuratively) months before there was any hint at all that Intel wanted to really get into the graphics game. I can’t find the original article even on archives, but this forum thread has snippets:
The tl;dr from that forum post being the following - remember that this is from mid-2016!
Former ATI loyalists inside AMD are trying to spin off from AMD in order to become supplier of gpu technology for Intel
So basically with the benefit of hindsight, it looks like the Vega team under Raja were more of “ATI loyalists” as that forum post puts it, and essentially defected to Intel.
It’s also worth noting that the head of the graphics division after Raja left and AMD moved full focus onto RDNA, David Wang, has graphics history going back to the N64 and GameCube with SGI and ArtX more-so than ATI directly (ATI bought out before the launch of the GameCube ArtX, and then AMD bought out ATI before the launch of the Wii).
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intel licensed the APU technology from AMD years ago but never did anything with it.