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This is the year of the CPU ‘chiplet’

The rate of improvement has slowed down, but 2019 might change all of that.

In the second episode of Upscaled, our new deep-dive explainer series focused on the components that make tech better, we're looking at what is going on with CPUs. Chips are still getting faster, but at a rate much slower than most predictions. 2019 might be the year that finally changes, though, and we're excited about a few developments that should be coming later this year.

We'll know more after Computex at the end of May, but both Intel and AMD have been teasing new designs for their CPUs. By breaking processors up into multiple chips and recombining them in novel ways, chipmakers are looking to skirt some of the manufacturing issues that have been plaguing the industry for years. Intel and AMD have different strategies for how this will work, but both companies are actively developing new products based on this "chiplet" design.

But how exactly is this going to work? And why did chip performance go so off track in the first place? Check out our video to find out.