TOPS

Units & Measurements abbreviation · Data Unit

TOPS
Stands forTera operations per second
CategoriesUnits & Measurements

TOPS stands for Tera operations per second, a data unit abbreviation.

Trillions of operations per second, the headline spec for neural processing units (NPUs) and AI accelerators, usually measured for low-precision integer math such as INT8. Microsoft requires an NPU of at least 40 TOPS for its Copilot+ PCs.

Example: The laptop's NPU is rated at 45 TOPS for on-device AI features.

Usage notes

TOPS usually counts integer operations rather than floating-point ones, so it is not directly comparable with TFLOPS, and vendors may quote sparse or INT4 figures to inflate the total. Phone chipmakers publish TOPS ratings for their AI engines as well.

More data unit abbreviations

  • b – Bit
  • bps – Bits per second
  • dpi – Dots per inch
  • DWPD – Drive writes per day
  • EB – Exabyte
  • EiB – Exbibyte
  • FLOPS – Floating-point operations per second
  • FPS – Frames per second
  • GB – Gigabyte
  • Gbps – Gigabits per second
  • GiB – Gibibyte
  • GT/s – Gigatransfers per second

See all 36 data unit abbreviations →

Edited by the AbbreviationList.com team. Spotted an error or a missing meaning? Contact us.