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comes to processor speed whether it's a CPU or a GPU you probably think in
megahertz or gigahertz at first but
these numbers aren't actually very useful if you're comparing processors
across different models so maybe that's
why graphics card makers in particular have started leaning on a specification
called flops to describe their latest and greatest hardware but what does that
mean I mean is that a measure of how many disappointing $60 games your card
will run before it dies no flops is a
performance metric that stands for floating-point operations per second now
this might sound like the time it takes for your magic 8-ball to give you an
answer but it's really a measure of how quickly your processor can do math that
involves a mix of large small and fractional numbers and it matters
because computers only have a finite amount of space to store the numbers
that they work with for a single number this is typically either 32 or 64 bits
depending on what processor and program you're using so in order to express a
range of very large and very small numbers some of these bits are allocated
destroying the digits of the number itself while others are reserved to
specify where the decimal point should be a little bit like scientific notation
this makes it easy to express huge or
tiny numbers in a limited number of bits
but keep in mind that floating-point operations are less straightforward for
your processor to carry out than ones that only involve integers due to the
computer needing to deal with ever-changing exponents converting them
to and from decimal numbers and rounding them off now if you watched our episode
explaining the difference between CPUs and GPUs which if you haven't you can
check out here you might already understand why it's more common to see a
flops measurement on a graphics card spec page versus one for a CPU much of
the math your GPU needs to do in order to render the images that you see on
your screen uses vectors to determine where each line and shape should go and
crunching these numbers involves using many different floating-point numbers
whose exponent values can vary quite a bit now supercomputers and more powerful
workstations used for scientific research and weather modeling are also
often described in terms of flops as they also heavily rely on using
floating-point numbers but what exactly
does any of this mean for you out there yes you Tom Smith who's just trying to
score a good deal on a video card should you go for whatever has the highest
flops that you can still afford the answer is probably no even though more
flops does indicate more raw computational power it means it's better
in the same way that a CPU with more megahertz or a digital camera with more
megapixels is better many other things
will play a huge role in how good of an experience you'll have with your
graphics card including memory capacity and bandwidth the specific architecture
that your GPU uses and even how nicely the drivers play with the specific games
in your library so the takeaway here is that unless you're an AI or Big Data
researcher there's no need to be all starry-eyed at how the new Titan V has a
hundred and ten teraflops of pure power
but at least you know that the specification on the back of the box
doesn't refer to the sound that your wallet makes as it
flops down on the checkout counter
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