In July 2022, hardware big boss Dave James checked out the modular, user-upgradable Framework laptop and declared (opens in new tab) After attending the Framework event in San Francisco today, I have some very good news for Dave.

Framework announced Framework 16 on Thursday, bringing its modular design to a larger system built to house a dedicated GPU, a 16-inch body with an "expansion bay" system that extends the back of the laptop beyond the display, larger graphics board; imagine a laptop about 12 inches deep from the touchpad to the rear exhaust port when equipped with an RTX 4060.

These GPU models are purely hypothetical for me at this point: Framework is not talking about what exact CPUs or modular graphics cards will be available with Framework 16, which is expected to start shipping in "late 2023." However, we may know more before then, as pre-orders are expected to begin this spring.

Like Framework's existing laptops, you can swap out modules depending on the kind of I/O you want: USB-C, HDMI ports, microSD slots, etc. New to the Framework 16 is a keyboard option for the larger laptop body, with an optional numeric keypad; Framework also showed a cute option for those who don't care about a numeric keypad, like an LED dot matrix display to pong They had a The Raspberry Pi microcontroller used for these optional features can be user-programmable if you want to get fancy, although if you need a standard centered keyboard, you could probably fit in a flat panel.

Like much of Framework's technology, the code is open source. The company has released the firmware for the QMK keyboard on Github (opens in new tab).

What we do know about the graphics performance of Framework 16 is that the laptop uses a PCie Gen 4x8 interface, providing up to 16 GB/s of bandwidth. Tests have shown that this bandwidth is sufficient even for the desktop RTX 4090 (open in new tab). Thus, I think it is reasonable to speculate that any GPU that can be crammed into a Framework laptop today, or even three years from now, will be constrained by heat dissipation and potential wattage before it faces bandwidth limitations.

But will there actually be an opportunity to fit new GPUs in Framework 16 a few years down the road? Versions of this promise have been made over the years, from part-replaceable desktop replacement laptops (open in new tab) to Alienware's Area 51m (open in new tab), which is supposedly GPU upgradeable, to early 2010s MXM modules (open in new tab). We have seen it many times. None of these designs have stuck. And even though external GPU enclosures have been around for a decade, they have never caught on, even when big companies like Razer have tried (opens in new tab).

It seems like every few years someone claims to have it figured out, but the tradeoffs and costs have never made these options more attractive than custom-made desktops or ultralight laptops. At least Framework has done so wisely. Instead of jumping right into more complex gaming laptop designs, it started with the more portable Framework 13.

And the fact that Framework has open-sourced many of its designs shows that it is at least more committed to true customization than other hardware companies working on this idea. Perhaps we have finally reached the stage where dedicated GPUs and other laptop components are compact enough to be interchangeable across multiple hardware generations. We will find out later this year whether Dave's dream will really come true.