ITERATION VS INNOVATION

September was one of the more exciting months than I can remember in a long while because we've actually got a good range of updates happening within a short span of each other, that actually have some meat in them for a technology journalist to dig into. You know, the good old days of geeky tech specifications for the categories and products that HardwareZone and HWM started off with in the first place.

We basically saw the trifecta of updates from AMD, Intel and Nvidia within the same month for their latest microarchitecture and next generation products. And technically, you could say there is a fourth entry as well if you count Apple's A16 Bionic in the iPhone 14 Pro. These are the technologies that drive all our modern performance computing, creation, entertainment and mobility devices.

In this issue, we take a side-by-side look at both the AMD Ryzen 7000 series as well as Intel's 13th Gen Core ‘Raptor Lake' processors as the next kings of personal computing. What's actually interesting about the two is the juxtaposition of the application of technology used in the development of their respective next-generation processors. Have I lost you there yet?

What I'm getting at is the fact that Intel has managed to deliver their promised performance using what many consider to be ‘dated' technology in the microprocessor manufacturing industry, ie. a 10nm node process that has been around for the past 4 years, while AMD is capitalising on a more modern 5nm node, which is seen by many as more advanced and innovative.

This is a topic of debate for the geeks in us, but from the perspective of consumers, does it really matter? If a processor can deliver the same level of performance and efficiency befitting what is expected if a ‘next-gen' product, that should be enough. Right?