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SILICON SILIC CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher/Editor Nicholas Vinen Technical Editor John Clarke – B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Jim Rowe – B.A., B.Sc. Bao Smith – B.Sc. Tim Blythman – B.E., B.Sc. Advertising Enquiries (02) 9939 3295 adverts<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Allan Linton-Smith Dave Thompson David Maddison – B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Dr Hugo Holden – B.H.B, MB.ChB., FRANZCO Ian Batty – M.Ed. Phil Prosser – B.Sc., B.E.(Elec.) Cartoonist Louis Decrevel loueee.com Founding Editor (retired) Leo Simpson – B.Bus., FAICD Silicon Chip is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 626 922 870. ABN 20 880 526 923. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription rates (Australia only) 6 issues (6 months): $65 12 issues (1 year): $120 24 issues (2 years): $230 Online subscription (Worldwide) 6 issues (6 months): $50 12 issues (1 year): $95 24 issues (2 years): $185 For overseas rates, see our website or email silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au Recommended & maximum price only. Editorial office: Unit 1 (up ramp), 234 Harbord Rd, Brookvale, NSW 2100. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone: (02) 9939 3295. ISSN: 1030-2662 Printing and Distribution: 24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204 2 Silicon Chip Editorial Viewpoint Close-up vision: use it or lose it Like most people, as I am getting older, I have noticed that it’s becoming harder to focus on tiny objects close to my face. However, I think this has to do with more than just age. These days, due to my editorial duties, I spend a lot more time editing documents on the computer, answering e-mails and so on, and less time building PCBs and such. That means my vision is fixed at the same distance of around 30-50cm for much of the day. When I recently managed to get far enough ahead in my editing duties to work on some projects, I struggled working with parts that I had no difficulty with just a few years ago. But I noticed that over time, as I did more soldering and assembly work, much of my good close-up vision started to come back, and I was suffering less from eye strain and such. One of the reasons our vision deteriorates as we age is that the flexible lens in our eyes becomes less elastic over time, making it harder to focus on objects closer to our faces. But I wonder if that is accelerated if we are not using our close-up vision enough. I also suspect that the muscles that change the shape of the lens will weaken if they are not used, leading at the very least to increased eye strain when working with small objects or reading small type. Regardless of the mechanism, I think you are more likely to keep your close-up vision if you use it regularly. Having said that, it probably isn’t great to use it too much, either. We need to spend some time looking into the distance every day too, and many hours spent working with tiny details are likely to result in eye strain and headaches at the end of the day. Competition resulting in innovation It looks like the CPU market is heating up again (quite literally in some senses). After seemingly almost a decade of stagnation, AMD and Intel are finally working hard to leapfrog each other. The just-released Ryzen 7000 series runs at impressively high frequencies, up to around 6GHz in stock form, compared to around 5GHz for the previous generation AMD parts and current Intel CPUs. That frequency jump primarily comes down to the process node shrinking from 7nm in the previous generation to 5nm in the current generation (see our articles on IC Fabrication Technology in the June-August 2022 issues for details: siliconchip.au/Series/382). Along with efficiency improvements, the result is an approximately 30% improvement in single-threaded performance. That’s similar to the previous generation’s gain, so we’ve seen computer speeds jump nearly 70% in just a couple of years. Parallel processing users won’t be disappointed either, with the flagship AMD CPU (Ryzen 7950X) beating the Intel i9-12900K by 42%. And now, just after I wrote that, Intel announced their 13th-generation parts (that we knew were coming). They are certainly an improvement over the 12th-generation, increasing both the core count and maximum operating frequencies. But it looks like AMD is still in the lead in many workloads, at least for now, as Intel have not changed their node so radically. We don’t want the situation we had for most of the last decade where AMD was down (but not quite out), and Intel had no real competition. They would bring out a new generation of CPUs now and then with modest improvements, but it didn’t seem like they were really trying that hard. That laziness has cost them their technology lead, and now they are scrambling to catch up. Cover image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/BvAoCypqRXU Australia's electronics magazine by Nicholas Vinen siliconchip.com.au