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Comment by schmorptron | Hacker News Reader

It's going to be exciting to see which GPU manufacturer they went with. Intel salvaging arc? This eGPU that can be slotted in is exactly the thing I'd been hoping they would do if they added GPUs and the AMD option is incredible. Gonna have to put my money where my mouth is once it's time for a new laptop now...

I also think it's important to not underestimate the flexibility and marketing aspects of the eGPU design they went with. Someone who has a laptop they use for playing games with a still fine CPU but outdated GPU might look at this and just buy the eGPU. Then when it comes time to upgrade the laptop itself they might be all-in on the value of an upgradable system.

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> which GPU manufacturer they went with

The beauty of this is they don't have to choose. The GPU can be anything that communicates over Thunderbolt and fits in the physical module specs.

anything that communicates over Thunderbolt and fits in the physical module specs

In other words, only the GPU modules that Framework chooses to make.

Plus any that anyone else chooses to make.

Yea, that’s true in a world where no other company is capable of manufacturing a GPU enclosure with the physical specs they’ve defined. Thankfully, I’m pretty skeptical we live in that world.

If the framework laptop grows in market size that there’s enough demand for it, then anyone could manufacture and sell those components, which is kind of the point.

We’ve opened the specs specifically to avoid this scenario! The information we have up on GitHub today is enough to get started on module development, and we’ll share any additional information that is useful to enable third party board makers.

My concern is more about business than technical factors. The NRE for such a module is going to be significant so the addressable market needs to be pretty big to justify it. Third-party modules could also get killed off by first-party ones that come later.

Third-party modules could also get killed off by first-party ones

I think it is pretty clear that Framework intends to allow you to buy the most barebones laptop you can. I mean they let you buy 0 of the little cartridge modules, I assume they won't force people to buy one of these PCIex8 modules.

I mean if some company is selling, say, a Radeon 7600 module and then Framework comes out with their own "official" 7600 module then the third-party company is toast.

Alternatively, that means Framework doesn't need to spend resources building their own version, or acquiring a company that makes one. It's to Framework's benefit that they don't compete with module vendors. They just need to let the vendor list them in the official marketplace and promote them as a success story for the modular laptop concept.

With this in mind, trampling module vendors doesn't seem like a great idea. What's the point of creating an ecosystem if there's nobody around to participate?

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