“To enable the massive 256GB/s memory bandwidth that Ryzen AI Max delivers, the LPDDR5x is soldered,” writes Framework CEO Nirav Patel in a post about today’s announcements. “We spent months working with AMD to explore ways around this but ultimately determined that it wasn’t technically feasible to land modular memory at high throughput with the 256-bit memory bus. Because the memory is non-upgradeable, we’re being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands.”
😒🍎
Edit: to be clear, I was only trying to point out that “we’re being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands” is clearly targeting the Mac Mini, because Apple likes to price-gouge on RAM upgrades. (“Unamused face looking at Apple,” get it? Maybe I emoji’d wrong.) My comment is not meant to be an opinion about the soldered RAM.
Many LLM operations rely on fast memory and gpus seem to have that. Even though their memory is soldered and vbios is practically a black box that is tightly controlled. Nothing on a GPU is modular or repairable without soldering skills(and tools).
To be fair it starts with 32GB of RAM, which should be enough for most people. I know it’s a bit ironic that Framework have a non-upgradeable part, but I can’t see myself buying a 128GB machine and hoping to raise it any time in the future.
If you really need an upgradeable machine you wouldn’t be buying a mini-PC anyways, seems like they’re trying to capture a different market entirely.
My biggest gripe about non replaceable components is the chance that they’ll fail. I’ve had pretty much every component die on me at some point. If it’s replaceable it’s fine because you just get a new component, but if it isn’t you now have an expensive brick.
I will admit that I haven’t had anything fail recently like in the past, I have a feeling the capacitor plague of the early 2000s influenced my opinion on replaceable parts.
I also don’t fall in the category of people that need soldered components in order to meet their demands, I’m happy with raspberry pis and used business PCs.
According to the CEO in the LTT video about this thing it was a design choice made by AMD because otherwise they cannot get the ram speed they advertise.
There’s camm2, the new standard for high speed removable memory. Asus already has released a motherboard that uses it and it matches the 8000 mts of the Framework which won’t be out until 3Q this year.
Framework chose non upgradable because it was easier/cheaper. That’s fine except Framework’s entire marketing has been built around upgradeable hardware.
To be fair, you didn’t ask a question. You made a statement and ended it with a question mark, so I don’t really understand exactly what it is that you were asking.
Yeah exactly, its worthless… Even the big players already admit to the AI hype being over. This is the worst possible thing to launch for them, its like they have no idea who their customers are.
😒🍎
Edit: to be clear, I was only trying to point out that “we’re being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands” is clearly targeting the Mac Mini, because Apple likes to price-gouge on RAM upgrades. (“Unamused face looking at Apple,” get it? Maybe I emoji’d wrong.) My comment is not meant to be an opinion about the soldered RAM.
Well, more specifically: why didn’t they try to go for LPCAMM?
Because you’d get like half the memory bandwidth to a product where performance is most likely bandwidth limited. Signal integrity is a bitch.
I thought LPCAMM was designed specifically to address the bandwidth and connectivity issues that crop up around high-bandwidth + low-voltage RAM?
Would 256GB/s be too slow for large llms?
It runs on the gpu
Many LLM operations rely on fast memory and gpus seem to have that. Even though their memory is soldered and vbios is practically a black box that is tightly controlled. Nothing on a GPU is modular or repairable without soldering skills(and tools).
To be fair it starts with 32GB of RAM, which should be enough for most people. I know it’s a bit ironic that Framework have a non-upgradeable part, but I can’t see myself buying a 128GB machine and hoping to raise it any time in the future.
If you really need an upgradeable machine you wouldn’t be buying a mini-PC anyways, seems like they’re trying to capture a different market entirely.
My biggest gripe about non replaceable components is the chance that they’ll fail. I’ve had pretty much every component die on me at some point. If it’s replaceable it’s fine because you just get a new component, but if it isn’t you now have an expensive brick.
I will admit that I haven’t had anything fail recently like in the past, I have a feeling the capacitor plague of the early 2000s influenced my opinion on replaceable parts.
I also don’t fall in the category of people that need soldered components in order to meet their demands, I’m happy with raspberry pis and used business PCs.
According to the CEO in the LTT video about this thing it was a design choice made by AMD because otherwise they cannot get the ram speed they advertise.
There’s camm2, the new standard for high speed removable memory. Asus already has released a motherboard that uses it and it matches the 8000 mts of the Framework which won’t be out until 3Q this year.
Framework chose non upgradable because it was easier/cheaper. That’s fine except Framework’s entire marketing has been built around upgradeable hardware.
Which is fine, but there was no obligation for Framework to use that chip either.
Yes that’s the problem.
That they want to sell cheap ai research machines to use for workstation?
That’s a poor attempt to knowingly misrepresent my statement.
No, it is a question
The answer is that they’re abandoning their principles to pursue some other market segment.
Although I guess it could be said to be like Porsche and Lamborghini selling SUVs to support the development of their sports cars…
I don’t understand how that answers my question
To be fair, you didn’t ask a question. You made a statement and ended it with a question mark, so I don’t really understand exactly what it is that you were asking.
Yeah hugely disappointed by this tbh. They should have made a gaming capable steam machine in cooperation with valve instead :)
This is an AI chip designed primarily for running AI workflows. The fact that it can game is secondary
Yeah exactly, its worthless… Even the big players already admit to the AI hype being over. This is the worst possible thing to launch for them, its like they have no idea who their customers are.
The AI hype being over doesn’t mean no one is working on AI anymore. LLMs and other trained models are here to stay whether you like it or not.