Questions About Power Management of Expansion card?

Creators & Developers
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• 1 - Is it possible for one of the expansion cards to be powered on while the laptop is off, the Same as we do in regular laptops?
• 2 - Does Framework Laptop comes with “USB Wake Up from S3” in BIOS?

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For 2. No, but tigerlake uses modern standby instead of S3 standby. So usb wake should be ok.

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Okay, that’s :+1:.
1 - Can I know what is the max. current that can be drawn from one of the internal Type-C ports of the framework laptop?
2 - Does these ports have any kind of protection or something like eFuses?
3 - If I design my own expansion card, Do I have to add different types of protections?

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  1. Max current is 3A/1.5A on a first come first served basis for 3A.
  2. Each port is current limited using a current limiting IC which will reset the port power if the current limit is tripped, the current limit is set to either 3A or 1.5A + a small margin.
  3. I would recommend at least a fuse on your expansion card. You could use a polyfuse or current limiting IC. Your expansion card could be plugged into other devices.
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Is that max 5V, 15W?

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Thanks, @Kieran_Levin. There are 2 x Type-C and 2 x TBC. Right?

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@Sagar73594 My understanding is that all 4 Type-C ports are TBT 4 capable. Branding around Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 is such a mess but it should support most Type C devices out there (TBT3 and TBT4, USB4, All of the USB3.x, DP Alt mode).

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I’m pretty confident that @Luke_Mahowald is correct. All 4 ports are USB4. From what the team has said, uniformity between all the module ports was a big design goal, and a reason to select the processor line they did.

USB4 implies TB3 compatibility because USB4 is the same standard, just without branding. Intel gave the USB Implementers Forum the Thunderbolt protocol to use, but not the trademark. In their vast wisdom, the USB folk name all their ports, protocols, etc “USB.” So now you have USB4 (generic TB protocol) multiplexing USB 3.x (the actual USB protocol) over USB Type-C (the physical connector standard), and other “fun” names like USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. I feel for anyone who is trying to just buy two things that work together. But I digress.

As the Framework team is still waiting for certification, they can’t legally say that they have Thunderbolt 3 or 4, only that they have USB4. Given that the Thunderbolt controller is integrated into Intel’s own CPU, and given what the team has said the specs of the laptop are, it would be a huge surprise if it doesn’t pass TB4 certification once it gets tested (TB4 is just TB3 with stricter minimum specs, max specs are the same.)

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