Looks like you´re right about AMD mobile being monolithic-only.
I don´t think chiplets will be a desktop-only thing. It makes more sense the bigger the die is, though, so definitely a must on bigger designs. It´s also confirmed that Meteor Lake will be chiplet-based.
Die stacking will be quite interesting, we already see great benefits of that in other type of chips.
Yep, I know.
Unrealistic? They are already improving efficiency for every new generation.
Efficiency isn´t the only factor at play here. Yield means a lot for production cost and chiplets are a very simple way of massive improving that aspect as well as adding flexibility in designs. It also enables so many more SKUs, especially scaled-up designs.
With chiplets, what you are essentially doing is cutting what would be a single die into, say, 4 dies. Whereas a defect on that monolithic die would make the entire die non-functional (0 % yield from that single die) you´d have 3 out of 4 functioning chiplets (which translates into 75 % yield from the same area). Don´t translate these numbers over to per wafer yields, it´s simply to demonstrate the principle of why chiplets are beneficial.
It´s pretty obvious how advantageous this is for yields and design flexibility. It also explains why AMD can go crazy with Threadripper and undercut Intel´s pricing by half for something that perform better.
Less relevant for small and low-power chips, yes. But to say it will be a desktop-only thing is not right.
Latest AMD mobile CPUs have USB4 support so eGPUs will work! Also AMD mobile CPU natively have ECC support! So if we could only get motherboard support, then we could install our own ECC!
The 7040 series with Zen 4 and RDNA 3 in an APU look like they could be really great for laptops where you want to do some graphics or gaming, but don’t want to need to be plugged directly into a nuclear reactor and have the fan sound like a helicopter taking off. It also has an AI engine, whatever that is. It’s by far the most modern and interesting CPU in AMD’s new laptop lineup, but I imagine it may carry a premium, despite not being available in 16 core variation (fine by me…)
Yes but AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 mobile processors include the 16-core Zen 4 7945HX, c’mon framework you know its what we all want.
The 7x45 CPUs are probably not going to happen since they have a 55W TDP, but I’ll add here that I’ll jump on any Framework laptop with a Ryzen 7x40 CPU as soon as it releases!
Now 7000 series was announced, specifically the 7040 series I am quite interested in.
I get your point that I may have over-exaggerated how far ahead AMD is from Intel, but while that may be the case, I personally am very frustrated with big blue and do not wish to give them any of my business until they right the ship so to speak.
I personally have been building systems (desktop and laptops, back when you could) over 20 years in a personal and professional setting. I’ve seen and done it all. Right now though for the use case I am interested in, a Ryzen 7040 series would be ideal for me. As I am looking for a one chip solution that ‘could’ decently run a game a 1080p if necessary, but more importantly be thin and light that sips power and is useful on long trips along with staying in line with the 28w TDP.
I was very disappointed a few years ago when Kaby Lake-G was effectively cancelled after the release of Zen in 2017, as that type of product is what I am searching for in a laptop. The Phoenix APU (Ryzen 7040 series) is the closest I have seen that come to fruition over five years later.
@Mike_Hoon I won’t contest that AMD looks to be quite strong. I’m not ready to count Intel out just yet. I reserve judgement until reviews come out. Meteor Lake (and Lunar Lake for that matter) look to be quite the contenders. And unfortunately for all the AMD fans, I’m betting there might still be an allocation problem. Intel has its flaws, it’s abominable handling of Arc being a good example, but it does plenty to support smaller companies like FW. I’ll be interested in seeing the reviews.
Just posting here, not since I especially want one, but was simply surprised by the reactions of a couple of University students I was talking to.
When I suggested one of them buy the Framework laptop, they all recognized the name, but all immediately said they would buy it if it had an AMD CPU…
I was just surprised that even so far away from the Framework community, people immediately recognized the brand, wanted to buy it, but the Intel CPU broke the deal for them.
Once again I don’t really stand anywhere on this request, it was just surprising that the 3 random students I talked to all knew about Framework!
On one hand I’m sure Framework would love to be able to have Intel and AMD versions of their laptop. That would allow them to commoditize the CPU, capture as many customers as possible, and work the CPU brands for the best pricing. As a customer I would love for there to be an AMD laptop as well, especially for the power efficiency at lower wattage.
On the other hand it seems like a really difficult path to get there. Framework has only just achieved Thunderbolt certification on the 12th gen Intel laptops, and they’ve still got a big backlog of improvements to make on the Intel side to make those laptops more competitive. Adding in AMD would divide the team, and both the Intel and AMD products would likely be worse for it.
Assuming Intel hits close to their targets for Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake, the Intel processors should get significantly caught up to what AMD is offering. As much as it would be nice to have an AMD option in the short term It could be a better long term play for Framework to focus their limited engineering resources on making their Intel implementations as good as possible so that they can have a really compelling Meteor Lake board available on day one of the 2024 Meteor Lake release. I would take really good Intel implementations in Framework laptops over middling(or worse) Intel and AMD options.
My Samsung is a few years older now, (UN55KU6290), but I would have thought that the WiFi would have been integrated into the SoC, but no: I opened it up shortly after getting it, and the WiFi was off on it’s own little daughterboard connected by a suspiciously 5-conductor cable.
Even though one may not need more than 100 Mb for sustained playing, the additional bandwidth does help to decrease buffering times at the start of a piece of media, and when scrubbing to a different spot. This, and the use case for some is playing content from a local NAS, and some 4k Blu-Ray content is getting dangerously close to 100 Mb/s
As some have brought up, the Ryzen 7040 CPUs are looking incredibly attractive, and would be an instant buy for me if Framework made them available. Battery life and iGPU performance are tied for my number one gripes with this laptop.
People are also assuming that the NIC is actually capable of the claimed line speed; in my experience Realtek are not. for example, my experience of Realtek ‘gigabit’ chips is that they crap out around 110mbit and are only barely capable of 100mbps sustained transfer rates.
If their 100mbps chips are actually capable of sustaining 100mbps (~12.5MB/s throughput) then that’s great, if not their so-called ‘gigabit’ chips will just about fit the bill.
Transferring all my data between two computers was faster with an intel 10/100 card in one computer (intel gigabit in the other) than with the realtek onboard because the intel card quickly hit 12MB/s and stayed there for the duration while the realtek ramped up and as soon as it hit 13MB/s, it crapped itself and dropped to KB/s.
I would have to say you got a bad NIC. While my preference is Intel most third party docks come with Realtek. The one I am using right now gets at least 800mbps since some of my file transfers clock in at 100MB/s+ . Most of my reading on the matter suggests that Realtek do crap out at around 850mbps or so depending on the chipset. So they are generally perfectly fine for use with say a laptop, but I would never use them in a server, firewall, or router as anything but a management interface.
I like my original 11th Gen Framework. But I’d love to see a Ryzen option, specifically the Ryzen 7040 series, not so much for the CPU performance (which I don’t need for the things I do with it) but for the much better GPU. I know some of you are looking for a 7045 series processor and a discrete GPU, but that will have to wait for a new platform with more cooling, and it will be a larger and heavier system that I don’t want.
That’s the option that would convince me to upgrade this year. Otherwise I’ll just have to wait through a few more Intel generations because they’re not expected to deliver a major graphics improvement until 15th Gen.
