As we venture further into a world of technology that’s dominated by artificial intelligence, you’re going to see manufacturers making some big claims. One AI measurement is “TOPS”, and here’s our basic explanation of just what it is.
If you pay attention to technology product launches, you’ll know that companies love to say how much better the performance of their device is than key competitors. Well, AI is everywhere in the tech world right now, so you’re likely to see more and more talk of just how powerful their AI implementation is too. We’re diving into a term that measures such performance. Read on for the skinny.
What is TOPS?
The term TOPS stands for trillions or tera operations per second. TOPS is a simplifying metric used as a representation of how many computing operations an AI chip (NPU) is capable of.
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The metric simply represents how many simple operations it can process per second and, as such, it doesn’t provide an accurate metric for the complexity of the operations an AI chip can solve. This makes it more of a rough performance guide than a specific and extremely accurate representation of capabilities. This is similar to how the metric TFLOPS has been used to represent the power of gaming consoles in recent years but is not fully representative of its eventual output.
The number itself is calculated by combining the amount of operations an AI chip can do per second and multiplying it by the maximum frequency it can achieve.
When it comes to seeing TOPS used in the wild, different technology companies have adopted different approaches. It’s a metric Apple has largely avoided, instead, as it does with other metrics, simply comparing performance directly with predecessors or rivals. But, brands like Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, Huawei, Intel, AMD and Microsoft have all been using the TOPS metric concerning AI performance in recent times.
For example, Microsoft has requested that Windows AI PCs offer 40 TOPS, which they say enables on-device AI Copilot capabilities (via Tom’s Hardware). Further, Intel and Qualcomm are both touting around 45 TOPS for their latest Core Ultra and Snapdragon X Elite chips respectively. While AMD is offering up around 40 TOPS with the Ryzen 8040 series.
With on-device AI capabilities still limited across PCs, a full assessment of how TOPS truly reflects the performance and features users experience will have to wait until AI becomes a larger part of day-to-day computer use.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
