Any upcoming support for AMD 4000/5000 series processors? I see they’re performing quite better than equivalent latest processors of Intel and are power efficient as well, effectively making battery last longer!
Is there any plans for supporting AMD processors?
Edit: Also their prices are quite lesser than Intel ones.
Although we are planning to launch this summer with 11th Gen Intel Processors, the Framework Laptop is designed to be able to support and upgrade to other CPU platforms in the future. We’ll make sure to announce when that happens!
If they support TB4/USB4 with maxed out design for the modules, right? That excludes all other platforms for now.
I don’t believe that’s correct, at least not with more recent Thunderbolt. I believe it’s a separate chip that’s needed on the mainboard, and no longer part of the CPU (though that wasn’t the case in the past, as I understand). So in theory it could be done with a new mainboard, though I thought the plugs that the expansion modules connect to were simply USB4 rather than TB4. If they are TB4 then that raises quite a few more options.
~ Jamie
Edit:
We were a bit new the community. After doing a run around and reading up on the device specs and whatnot it does seem that the modules do plug into TB4 ports, which means that you could get an AMD drop-in mainboard in the future with the TB4 module on the mainboard and everything will work as intended.
Very cool to know that they are actually TB4 ports and not just USB4. My confusion was because the expansion modules are listed as being USB4 rather than TB4. I’m not entirely sure why that might be, other than perhaps cost. Maybe we’ll see TB4 modules in the future.
~ Jamie
I would rather purchase an AMD based laptop… but I do plan on purchasing a Framework laptop even if AMD is not available (yet). If they do come out with an AMD motherboard that can be swapped out it’d be a testament to the whole concept of the laptop.
That’s more or less what I’m waiting on but they’ve been purposefully vague on an AMD laptop. Check the wording here “other cpu platforms”. They’ve called out ARM and RISC-V as options but refuse to mention AMD.
I’m not getting my hopes up anymore sadly
The Framework team is waiting for ThunderBolt certification.
Hopefully by the time Ryzen 6800U arrives we will have the option of purchasing it and fingers crossed for shipping to Romania.
I would venture to guess that it wouldn’t happen for more than 1Y from now. When Ryzen 6000 APU’s come out; they will be in short supply and smaller vendors like Framework will not be the ones to get them.
While I think an AMD Ryzen APU would be a considerable boon for the Framework performance-wise, there’s still the recurring matter of that pesky security chip, i.e. AMD Ryzen 6000 series processors will come with Microsoft Pluton security chips on all supporting systems.
Originally, I figured this was a co-processor that would be its own package on the motherboard. However, since it is trying to be a replacement for TPM (which doesn’t have protection against physical hardware attacks if the device were compromised), it looks like it’s going to be integrated into the APU itself and will take up physical space on the die.
Obviously, this has security benefits and is helpful for remote work, but it also might make installing/booting any OS besides Windows impossible unless it is user configurable and doesn’t need a factory signing key to work. Given the fact that Valve is in the process of releasing the Steam deck, a device that natively runs Linux, had insane levels of preorders and runs AMD silicon, AMD has to know that at least some of its users will not be using Windows.
Which is to say, this is a collaboration between Microsoft and AMD systems; who is to say that Microsoft wouldn’t intentionally make Pluton refuse to boot any OS besides Windows 10/11, just so that they can further increase their market cap? I’m not saying that’s what will happen, I’m saying it is a possibility.
So will newer intel cpus. that battle is already lost.
Honestly, I don’t think that’s likely. They don’t make a ton of money from Windows licenses. They’re moving towards more Linux OS anyway, it’s just going to take a long time to get there because they don’t want their non-tech-savvy users panicking or abandoning their ecosystem entirely. Change is slow.
licenses maybe not, but subscriptions, is another thing entirely. they already did it with the enterprise version of win10, its only a matter of time before they do it with consumer versions as well (right after almost everyone is on their current OS and unable to change it… )
It seems that Pluton can be disabled: AMD’s Pluton implementation seems to be controllable.
At least it’s reason for hope 
All this Pluton stuff makes me not want to get a Ryzen 6000 machine at all. MS based security is so bad. My surface laptop just broke the other day and MS automated support is broken too… and their actual support is terrible.
problem is intel will have it as well, and some ARM already does (mostly mediatek)