Bonus: The new Mac Pro has graphics with up to 56 teraflops of computing power, how is that different from a small supercomputer with 56 teraflops
In: Technology
Tera is short for 1.000.000.000.000
Flops is Short for „how often in a second can you do math with numbers with a comma?“
A teraflop means: This device can under good circumstances do this much math with commas per second
It is a measure of how fast a device can do this job.
Bonus: A graphics Card as in the Mac is an expert in doing this all the time with a lot of numbers at the same time. Geometry and something called linear algebra needs this all the time, which is what we need to have for nice computer pictures.
A supercomputer can do this too, but it is not an expert device. It can do many other things better than a graphics card, for example sorting things, following complicated rules, etc. Teraflops are not a good measure for comparing devices with different usages.
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