Welcome to the latest episode of Upscaled, our explainer show where we look at the components and parts that make our favorite tech better. In this episode we're checking out AMD's new Zen 2 processors. These chips are crazy fast, and pack up to 16 cores into a consumer design, all while being remarkably power efficient.

So how did AMD do it? Processor clock speeds have barely increased in years, but chips keep getting faster. What tricks are engineers using to keep the improvements coming? One of AMD's areas of focus was instructions-per clock, or IPC, a measure of how quickly the CPU can execute basic functions, and an area where AMD has historically lagged behind the competition.