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Comment by peletiah | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of fluff in this article, but little technical details. I'd be curious how the hinge works, and although a whole section of the article is dedicated to it, I explains nothing.

> It’s also, claims Panay, a first. “It’s never been done before. This product is the first ever where the GPU is in the base and then a second GPU is in the top.” The result is a “balance” between hardware and software.

Yeah. Right.

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> I'd be curious how the hinge works, and although a whole section of the article is dedicated to it, I explains nothing.

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/story-behind-surface-books-craz...

That line struck me too.

Apple has had GPU switching for quite a while (my 2010 MacBook Pro has it, and I don't think it was the first). So clearly MS didn't invent that.

I wonder if what he's talking about is the fact that it's a mainstream production system where the dedicated GPU is actually removable. Not a "Plug this into your Thunderbolt port" thing or a "Turn it off and stick this module in", but a "just pull it apart and the GPU is no longer there".

The balance part was questionable writing.

> my 2010 MacBook Pro has it, and I don't think it was the first

NVidia had unveiled Optimus (its graphics-switching solution) in February, but I don't know if there were laptops using it by April (when the 2010 MBP was releaased). Considering a bunch of optimus-based laptops were announced with Optimus itself, probably.

How many previous removable keyboard computers even had 2 GPUs?

(The claim isn't that GPU switching had never been done, it's that they put one in each part of the device. Which is sort of less interesting than the switching, but it's neat that the power hungry one is attached to the bigger battery.)

GPU switching is old, but not with the GPU in a separate location that can be physically detached....

I remember ThinkPad docking stations that could have a discrete GPU in the dock.

Well remembered! But in that case, the external graphics card was used to drive a separate external monitor, not the ThinkPad's LCD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPKd-YBX_s

That doesn't count and you know it; that's an external PCI express device, isn't actually part of the product itself.

Microsoft's statement is accurate when talking about a single product.

See comments just below. You've been able to use external graphics cards with Windows for ages, and it was a feature of ThinkPad docks back in 2007 or so, if not before.

And you're still missing the point. Microsoft's claim was about a single, integrated product.

So let me simplify:

  1) ThinkPad docks are an *optional accessory* that are
     not an *integrated* part of the product.

  2) the top part of the Surface Book doesn't have USB or
     display ports.  You can't buy it without the bottom
     part.

  3) Windows 10 is the first version of Windows to support
     the necessary, seamless multiadapter support they
     needed to allow seamless transitioning between the
     integrated GPU and the discrete GPU

Other products have had bits and pieces of almost everything in the Surace Book (none of them had the changes present in Windows 10, obviously); what Microsoft presented is the first fully-integrated representation of that technology today, that I am personally aware of. If you can show another laptop, that out of the box, in its base, has a GPU, and a detachable screen, I'm sure we'd all like to see it. Microsoft's claims are very specific.

Microsoft had some very specific, contextual qualifications to their statement. Since we're being pedantic, I though it was important to note the subtle distinctions.

Er.. I'm not arguing with you. I understand it perfectly well. Please see my other comments in the thread....

>Apple has had GPU switching for quite a while (my 2010 MacBook Pro has it, and I don't think it was the first). So clearly MS didn't invent that.

Adding to this: Nvidia has also been advertising GPU switching for quite a while now, under the Optimus brand. I don't think it's a coincidence that MS went with Nvidia over AMD for the SB.

The internals of the hinge, as shown in an "X-ray" style rendering in their keynote presentation, appeared to be remarkably similar to the design of the hinge used on the Lenovo Yoga 3.

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