- No interest in this exactly, but I am interested in the idea that third parties are now targeting the Framework form factor explicitly to sell upgrades/replacements outside of the Framework marketplace.
- This board uses the CIX CP8180 SoC, which has worse performance and significantly worse efficiency than even Apple's M1 chip. See Jeff Geerling's review of a desktop with this SoC: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-ent... If you need an ARM Linux laptop, it's probably a better choice to get a used M1 or M2 MacBook Pro and put Fedora Asahi on it.
- > early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle
Ooof. I feel like power efficiency would be the main reason I'd take the plunge and switch from x86_64 to arm64, given that there would be difficulties and trade offs software-wise to do so.
My 13th-gen Intel board in my Framework 13 sits at around 11W semi-idle (Firefox constantly burning 35% of one core for reasons that are my fault). And this is with Linux, where power management isn't always the best.
Regardless, I'm happy to see something like this. It might not be something I want today, but it's a step in the right direction.
by 999900000999
8 subcomments
- I don't have much faith in Arm Linux. Tuxedo gave up.
Cheap Windows Arm laptops are flooding the market, if someone can pick ONE laptop to support they could easily buy them on sale , refurbished them with Linux and make a profit.
Looks likes their are some challenges with doing this.
- This is astonishingly bad power usage for a laptop, a complete dealbreaker: "...early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle..."
- So this isn’t an official thing, this is a 3rd party selling a replacement motherboard, is that right?
by anthonyryan1
2 subcomments
- Does this board boot Linux via a device tree, or have hardware discovery?
How about UEFI vs arm-specific bootloaders?
I tried arm32 Linux a few years back, and the largest hindrance at the time was the device trees and non-UEFI boot process. Given up on exploring the platform further (except maybe for SBC like raspberry pi) until that situation improves.
by tonypapousek
0 subcomment
- > The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite have proven that ARM processors have earned a place in the laptop market
That’s a strange revision of fairly recent history. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Apple’s the one that proved out laptop ARM at scale.
by woodrowbarlow
1 subcomments
- here's the actual listing: https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc
i posted the article instead because it has some details that aren't on the listing.
- Qualcomm talked a lot about Snapdragon X Elite as the future of Windows and Linux on ARM, but results so far are mixed. Windows on ARM is finally usable on recent laptops, yet compatibility gaps remain, and Linux support is still far from mature.
The high idle power on the Framework ARM upgrade board shouldn’t be blamed solely on MetaComputing or CIX. Poor idle power efficiency is a long-standing issue on Linux laptops, especially with new platforms, so this looks more like an ecosystem-level power-management problem than a single-vendor failure.
What stands out to me is that Chinese companies are actually shipping hardware and pushing into every possible market segment. Their decentralized, diversified corporate ecosystem seems to enable fast experimentation and broad market penetration.
by coffeeaddict1
3 subcomments
- I'd like to ask HN a very vaguely related question. I need to get a self-hosted runner (for GitHub Actions) that is capable of running Windows ARM64. What are my options other than buying a machine and do everything manually? Are there any service providers that offer Windows ARM64 VMs? I can only seem to find options for Linux.
by csdreamer7
1 subcomments
- https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc
Save you a click or two. Looking at this I have so many questions. Am I buying a mainboard? It is not clear. It lists ports: it only supports 2 ports? You have four options with 16/32gigs and 1tb of storage? Is the storage soldiered? If so, what is the storage? emmc? Soldiered memory seems to be a given in the ARM ecosystem, but the storage is completely unacceptable on a framework mainboard.
The only difference between the pro and the regular is that the second port is a usb-c over an hdmi? I am assuming this is the mainboard even supporting framework extension cards.
No listed Linux compatibility support. Forget if the NPU even works in Linux; I do not even know if this will boot Linux because the company did not bother to submit devicetree patches to the kernel for their SOC. No listed Windows support even.
This company's copy is absolutely terrible.
- The real problem with ARM is whether the software vendors are really supporting it.
I use business software everyday that doesn’t support ARM, because of it’s licensing system doesn’t work on ARM processors.
Instead of fixing it, the company just sells cloud hosted windows licenses for $100 per user.
- I've had a Framework 13 for several years now, so I'm excited to see this kind of thing start to happen. Praying the next one out is a GPU/tensor workload unit so I'm not stuck at home on my desktop when I want to mess around with local AI models...
- Windows 11 ARM64 is the best operating system I've ever used for a laptop. Really excited to see this, although I wish this was a Snapdragon X CPU.
- Pity it’s not snapdragon. That may have improved chance of snapdragon Linux becoming viable
- I'm curious to see battery life reports over this. Chances are these arm chips will not be beating intel/amd on battery life.
Also worth looking at battery life compared to performance...
- It does make me wish I could drop in a macbook air motherboard into a framework to get a differnet kind of ARM processor.
- The complaints about battery life are valid however I see this as a test board to help bring more Linux programs to life on ARM. It can also be useful for porting other OSes like Haiku.
- Great, now there's just the matter of getting a proper keyboard, rather the junk that most laptops these days have.
https://kickingandstreaming.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/x2...
by cmrdporcupine
3 subcomments
- These Snapdragon X processors have some drama around not having decent Linux support, right?
EDIT: Sorry, not SnapdragonX - apparently I can't read.
Also, who is "MetaComputing" and can I trust them with my money? Something about the big "Web 3 Integrated Devices" branding on their landing page makes me less than enthusiastic. Otherwise I'd be hovering over 'buy'
- I would love to have a Framework laptop, but there is no guarantee the company will be around as long as, say, Lenovo, Dell, Apple, etc., and I would hate to get used to being able to customize on the fly, then have to go back to a run-of-the-mill laptop just because Framework went out of business.
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