What is Floating-Point Performance?

Floating-point operations per second, or FLOPS, is a performance metric you see on certain processors, notably GPUs. But what the heck does "floating-point" mean and why is it important?
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[@StelznerGaming]

FUN/GEEKY FACT: The new GPUs with over 90 Terraflops are powerful enough to run Cyberdyne's Skynet from the movie Terminator. In the film at one point they say its 90 Terraflops, which when they wrote the script in 1984, was considered mindblowingly insane! But now, we have that much power in our office/bedroom!

[@akimdeadly6247]

in my office? *cries willingly*

[@xwtek3505]

Films are rarely rendered with realtime rendering speed. In films, details are more important than speed. It took Disney 83 days to render the whole Frozen film, not 1.5 hours.

[@obi-wankenobi8023]

@@xwtek3505 this isnt about rendering. Its about the fictional AI in the movie which took as many tflops as modern GPUs have

[@SimoneBellomonte]

@@xwtek3505 What does this have to do with what he said.

[@MattP5000]

which terminator movie?

[@meowgoesthedog_]

2:55 tfw linus is such a pro at dropping stuff, his mere presence infects other people with this superpower

[@user-st5ir8mg3q]

Best comment

[@iustrenght2762]

Do IPC (instructions per clock) as fast as posible guys. We need that episode

[@KristoKorps]

IuStrenght Yeah, it would be an easy one to make since they mention it so much in other videos.

[@LORENSSIOK]

and floating point for cpu

[@code-dredd]

LORENSSIOK Floating-point ops in CPUs work the same as in GPUs. There may be CPU/GPU differences when it come to _other_ details, but the _representation_ of these numbers and how math is performed with them is the same in both. It's based on the IEEE-754 standard. *EDIT:* It should be noted that the number format described in this video is a _double-precision_ floating point number, which takes 64 bits of space. Graphics pipelines are generally designed to work using _single-precision_ floating point numbers, which only require 32 bits. This is done for performance, since math with 32 bit numbers is faster than on 64 bit numbers.

[@DaveSohan]

That's kinda obvious though 😁

[@fnige]

You can post it onto their fourms, just saying

[@bensmith7190]

Tom Smith... so close

[@GjaP_242]

2:22

[@GjaP_242]

2:56

[@asdasddas100]

Waiting for Tom Smith to comment

[@EVRLYNMedia]

i want it to happen

[@Envashion]

Tom here but i ain't no smith

[@r.pizzamonkey7379]

I just sent this video to a guy named Tom Smith, no joke. I really hope he does

[@tomspcalt159]

My name is Tom. Does that count?

[@kaungkyaw465]

Toms Pc alt no

[@martinenglish6641]

I remember the floating point being a dedicated chip on the mother board and in vary early pc kits, they were up-gradable and some were even flash-able like CMOS BIOS chips. That is still the way on mainframes of about 20 + years back are upgraded.

[@deltaninjadrm]

The Tom Smith that watched this is freaking out by now.

[@memeyselfandi]

Thats some quick maths!

[@Funnywargamesman]

VRTX British person located.

[@funbucket09]

Or literally any other country other than USA...... lol. We in AUS say Maths too.

[@Xyzewell]

muffs

[@nairemuh]

meths

[@markoftheland3115]

2 + 2 is 4, minus 1 thats 3

[@nokkusuu]

you should do a video on error codes

[@reD_Bo0n]

I love my IEEE 754 double precision numbers

[@raptyaxa5771]

2:52 Linus: *exists Stuff: *drops He can drop stuff with just his mind.

[@anishshanbhag6122]

Literally just was coding something and needed info on this topic. Thanks techquickie for your perfect timing!

[@zackery261]

Floating Lpoint Operations Per Second What a forced acronym

[@TheOJDrinker]

It could be FLOating Point operations per Second, or FLOating point operations Per Second, or FLoating point OPerations per Second... or just FLoating point OPerationS. Could FLOPS per second be redundant like so many other acronyms? The world may never know. (So: FLOP-S, FLO-PS, or FL-OP-S) "Forced acronym" is redundant, an acronym is a type of abbreviation (similar to an an "initialism") that you can pronounce, so pretty much all of them are "forced" unless you're lucky enough to have one that's already pronounceable. (Unlikely.)

[@khaskid]

@@TheOJDrinker brh

[@AurumFaber]

FLoating point Operations Per Second

[@nyquillusdillwad9119]

Thanks for the quickie, Linus!

[@tim3172]

*Triggers violent flashbacks to CompSci 101*

[@tamaskovacs3034]

omg! I am Tom Smith! HE SAID MY NAME! Haha :D Thx Jon for writing us in the script :)

[@Sulejek]

congrats bro :D

[@_-_-_-_-_-_-_-__-]

Good job man

[@newguy69]

I just wondered how many Tom Smiths gonna freak out :D

[@jjss488]

Nooo, youre Tamas Kovacs

[@usseal922]

JJ SS directly translated from Hungarian, he is Tom Smith

[@sebastiane7556]

What happened to Synergy? I miss it.

[@mcnamaraky]

ROFL. Comment of the day.

[@SupremeMasterr]

The ending pun was about money i wanted to see dollar shave club :(

[@miadhossainrafi810]

Steven Mactavish you made my day. 😂 😂 😂

[@KarrasBastomi]

freshbooks is more appropriate in this manner

[@iPtrck]

Sebastian E I actually bought that synergy and after that synergy 2 went out. I don't even have many PC

[@docjazz8743]

Did this as I was watching and was able to switch the resolution on this video from 1080 to 4K before the video ended thanks for the tip!

[@MrRajabMrwass]

two days ago when I was youtubing for floating point I said to myself I hope Linus make a video about it. And you did :D thank you a lot

[@dna129]

For all the Cali peeps... Hellaflops.

[@WeightyLemur]

*HECKA*flops

[@gixxerfixxer4159]

This is a Christian server after all.

[@ranjanbiswas3233]

@@gixxerfixxer4159 And Cali people really give shit to religion 😂😂 They don't even know who is their real father or real mother. 😂😂

[@ChrisVanMiddelkoop]

you teased me with showing me this on wan show. so happy to finally see it!

[@zelmatrix731]

This has to be the most simplified explanation of Floating Point per second calculations I have ever seen.

[@matamanthemaster]

Very good vid. Already knew about IEEE floating point from uni but that was really good info about FLOPS. I'll remember that acronym and look at FLOPS now :)

[@xxnike0629xx]

@Techquickie Is this related to the whole teraflops talked about with the PlayStation and Xbox?

[@Hobbles_]

Yes and no. In the specific instance of of the XBox One and the PlayStation 4, their GPUs and CPUs have identical architectures (and both are consoles, rather than PCs), and so TFLOPs actually can be used as a rough estimate of how much stronger or slower one is in relation to another. For consoles, unlike PCs, the engines can be made to interface directly with the hardware, rather than through a graphics APIs and drivers. It's not PERFECT still, as optimization still plays a large role in how well a piece of software performs, however, assuming identical levels of optimization, the higher TFLOPs of the PS4 would mean that the PS4 is X% more graphically capable, with some margin for error.

[@tomstech4390]

^This is partly wrong, xbox and ps4 share architectures (cpus and gpu) but otherwise they are just pc's they have an OS, graphics drivers and API's (xbox literally runs a version of windows 10) and the Gflops shouldnt really be compared...but they kinda can be, the Gflops talks about the stream processor throughput however a difference in render outputs..ROPs can have a big factor if they both werent so screwed in terms of cpu horsepower, one can have literally 3x the graphics flops of another but have the same rops which wil limit the maximum graphics performance even before it gets held back by the really low cpu horsepower (jaguar was designed for low end laptops...like atom) so consoles are pc's and the gflops can only be very loosely compared. and real world performance mightbe very different to what gflops would leads you to expect.

[@ABTechMarathi]

Seriously

[@trollichu504]

CPUs vs. GPUs is the TechQuickie which actually got me subscribed Amazing vid btw

[@desertfox1100]

Nice work, Linus! Make more videos like this one, simplifying abstract concepts.

[@jca-arkitekto-tv]

I'm on my office desk, sipping coffee while watching Linus Videos at my free time until I came to part 2:53.. I spilled my coffee laughing.

[@quangluuuc5263]

so helpful love it

[@ddz4853]

Please do a video about Aux vs Bluetooth LDAC and Bluetooth on audio transmission.

[@ayumuchan3541]

Finally they mention Tunnel Bear, it's been a while!

[@mryesnno4301]

I want to know how to calculate the computation of 1 GFLOPS processor would process 1tb of data?? Is it divide 1terabyte into megabytes then times by 1GFLOPS? I just need to know what 1 GFLOPS can process out of the 1tb data per second. Thanks

[@lonelyrock14]

Suggestion for next Video: What is Dynamic Bass Boost and how it works. :)

[@mudgie0205]

I just went over this in CS class

[@TheJuancapella]

You have a Counter-Strike class? tite

[@mudgie0205]

TheJuancapella ahaha

[@42thgamer80]

This is the content we want!

[@Daehawk]

I remember the mid 90s and my PC in 94. It was a little cheaper because it didn't have a floating point unit in the CPU. It was an SX and not a DX. Though back then it was not a big deal. I still think about FPU and Im not sure what has them now or not lol.

[@plamendimitrov5762]

there are co-processors in your processor to make it calculate that - trust me, had a lecture exactly for this in Tuesday

[@justincase9z]

cool and good

[@lesterthemolester8293]

Warm and bad

[@redeclipse4ever409]

The Justas Ahh refreshing

[@justincase9z]

are you implying that this video was bad ???? dissapointed

[@HilbertXVI]

The Justas drincc

[@lesterthemolester8293]

dude its a joke

[@ymcha9278]

Can you share your opinion on the low profile mechanical key switches ?

[@oli2.019]

Would be nice if there was a single number that could precisely determine performance or maybe just a benchmark that every product had to go through.

[@navjotsingh2251]

Too many variables do take into account, there won’t just be one number 🥲

[@thatguyalex2835]

I agree with you. An automated benchmark that simulates real world use would be nice. :)

[@SSteelification]

here i remember adding floating point co processors to both 68k and x86/x87 to boost performance.

[@tomstech4390]

Yep and people said FX wasnt a real core despite cpu's didnt have FPU units and intel didnt have an IMC for donkeys years after amd but thats easily forgotten cus its intel.

[@Nobody-eg4bi]

Toms Tech FX share floating points like 8 cores FX = 4 cores real and 4 cores virtual because every 2 cores share one floating point.

[@JohnPepp]

I feel old for that was a very big deal when processors came out for the PC in the early 80s.

[@Meowrian]

that was some serious check right there

[@unknownentity835]

Thank YOU ! :-)

[@J0nDaFr3aK]

3:40 funny how Star Wars IX is just around the corner and I happened to watch this video. Unlimited power!

[@robertlinke2666]

floating point is literraly scientific notation in base 2

[@TopHatProductions115]

1:19 - Yay signed values!

[@soerenbo]

You can hear Linus being tired of saying the tunnel bear part :D I have never heard him so unmotivated.

[@grten3700]

Thank you soo muchhhh

[@H3Vtux]

You should do a video on Fast Inverse Square Root

[@JasonGroom]

I am a data scientist, and I am very jealous of 110 teraflops

[@xorinzor]

Speaking of flops, go head over to tunnelbear!

[@darius9710]

significand is also known as the Mantissa (I believe)

[@druxfilms]

Can we get a revisit to Microsoft Mixed reality with the Dell visor?

[@brandonpoko]

do a video on the machine learning titan V, like how is it different etc

[@Mojobojo]

You missed SIMD, most 64 bit processors now days can do up to 512 (16 floats or 8 doubles) bits of floating point math per instruction.

[@mercury044]

For an idea of what to do for a fast as posible: how voice recognition works

[@superstealth385]

2:54 When you watch too much linus videos - Linus drop tips

[@mcnamaraky]

A FLoP is the word I would use to describe the case you guys designed in your last LTT video. ZINGGGGGGGGGG

[@kakarroto007]

Linus, I see less commercials on T.V.... that must be why I'm rocking an LTT shirt, and seriously considering signing up for tunnel bear vpn... dang it!

[@mitradev1]

Man tunnelbear must be having a great business going on

[@PixelBoyMiner]

The one time I'm early for a tech quickie video

[@aakash77]

Will you be selling WAN hoodies? I love the look of the one you got on and would like to buy one if you end up selling them.

[@jonathan643]

Yay! TunnelBear :D

[@CodeXBro]

Hey Linus, I could not find the hoodie you're wearing in this video in your store.

[@mixup2216]

oh my god linus is so funny hes the greatest comedian ever im literally dying he should do stand up

[@definitions7794]

K

[@BuzzaB77]

If I may chime in, for anyone making music, floating point performance makes a massive difference to how your DAW handles effects. so if you're trying to decide between an i5 and i7 at similar price points , in almost all audio cases the i7 will do better in audio production.

[@andtpfack8243]

BuzzaB77 yeah doood always jerk off at night ttto my flac files. I also make high quality beats on my phone. But noone buy ;(

[@jaycraswell5379]

Its still of value to measure the speed of a CPU / GPU in floating point operations. Running high level code or ugh a video game to see how fast it draws frames leaves so much up to the skill (or lack) of the programmer, the compiler and the operating system she or he used. Hardware speed may sometimes give results that are misleading but regardless of someone saying an 8080 ran 0.6 Mega Flops or 0.2 you could see that a CRAY 1 that ran at 200 Mega Flops was a significant improvement for doing floating point. Saying its not a perfect system of measurement is true but if you have that and???? Bash script code versus some tight written assembler code you really have zero information to judge the parts by. The same of course with people running some program written on top of a giant operating system with 7 layers of abstraction versus a program running without any interaction with the rest of the system. Some people get mixed up with Instructions per second and again you can really screw with the numbers by having one measuring how many NOPs run in a second versus another machine moving data from one memory location to the other. MHZ is really not of value because for a time you could get a guesstimate that a 5 MHz CPU (Same Type) was twice as fast as a 2.5 MHz but even then the faster machine might have memory that needed wait states to retain the data that made them a lot closer in speed. Newer machines have more then one core and each core can be running more or less instructions per clock. Even these machines can still measure a system by Mega Flops and have some idea of what your buying. If one core is 100 Mega Flops and you upgrade to a dual core? You probably have a rough doubling of speed. Marketing BS is what makes this a painful debate. One example was our company sold a 16" monitor which was measuring the from bottom left to top right of the viewing area. Other companies suddenly sold "higher resolution" 17" monitors because they decided to measure the distance between the mounting bolts of the exact same display. Take how many flops a CPU/GPU can do with a grain of salt. If you think of it as a rough estimate I think its still of great value. P.S. I want a fat wallet like yours that FLOPS loudly when you drop it.

[@abcmole]

They really do need to come up with a better naming system for CPUs and GPUs. When they say a Core I eye matey 42xwing or GeForce Padawan 69-12x edition it literally means NOTHING. I find it extremely confusing. They should have a standard benchmark rating in the name so it's easier to judge what it can do without having to read the small print to find the number of cores and so on. I'm old and remember (for example) the Pentium 2 266 MHz, and you immediately knew the speed compared to other processors. They need to say Intel i7 (standard rating) or Ryzen 7 (standard rating), and I think people would find what they are looking for a LOT easier.which would ultimately lead to increased sales. It would also be advantageous in knowing if a game would run on your system by having something similar as a standard benchmark rating for GPUs.

[@tressasmith7283]

I don't like how you talk to my brother Tom!

[@N0obWithaGunUK]

Damn, I actually understood some KZbin maths... Thanks A Levels!

[@WGuitarImprov]

2:53 someone other than Linus dropping something... I THINK NOT! I don't know if you finally hired a witch doctor for an editor or got Corsair to add separate key profiles in Cue2 for Taran "THE MACRO KING" Hemert but I'm onto you. But on a serious note great videos, love the content (all three channels) and remember. When lifting heavy objects always lift with your back in a jerking motion.

[@DJDanja1212]

We need a Serato DJ & mix Emergency eternal make up video. Something that help DJs select the right processor and GPU to run these programs efficiently there’s just no information on that stuff for us I think you’d be interested.

[@JumpeFurby]

the last time I flopped something on a counter I got arrested and i'm never allowed to even come near that place again...

[@alsayedjalal]

Everybody do the FLOP!!

[@NoorquackerInd]

1.2*10^3 + 1.6^10^2 = 1.36*10^3

[@EVRLYNMedia]

*to all cuda cores 1000 times per seconds*

[@Slimecrazy234]

im confused, if one chip can do 10 floating point operations per second and another, regardless of architecture differences etc... can do 8, wouldnt that mean the first chip is faster? Why is architecture relevant in a measure of final output performance like tflops?

[@psssantosh]

Hi Linus!!how are you!?

[@joseruiz6626]

p.s.s. santosh does he ever reply?

[@MrGameteller]

no lol

[@balarab1]

Hey there

[@eesahash3163]

Why would he reply to you? He's obviously arrogant

[@dariusduesentrieb]

hi

[@ROLOGamingOfficial]

What is that video where someone drops something form Radeon?

[@null-00000]

I like how they put the MHz in front of cpus, that use GHz, and vise versa

[@IamMorpheaus]

Ok Linus .. I am changing over to a GeForce card .. was an AMD fan boy but after watching a lot of your videos and looking at the line ups .. I am making the big plunge .. Keep up the good work ..

[@spamlorddooomba]

Could we get a video on drive mapping

[@harvins]

Please explain single vs double precision on GPU

[@LesskoBrandon]

i had an idea that my old G3258 @ 3.2 was faster than my very old P4 640 also @ 3.2, but i wasnt completely sure

[@PCr4zy]

Interesting how nGreedia present their new flag ship as *5x performance* in Double precision, and same week czech student getting awarded for saving electricity and cutting down on operation time by simplifying single and half precision.

[@DaemonCross]

Gonna wait for the B-Minus Tech Tips Version on this...

[@slayeromair]

I'm not tom smith!

[@gauvmusic]

Craft Omair 😂

[@AJD...]

Craft Omair he was talking to me

[@slayeromair]

AJD so your name is tom smith?

[@AJD...]

Craft Omair could be. You'll never know

[@slayeromair]

AJD OOOOOOOOWOOOOOOOOOOOWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[@d4m4s74]

Did you misspell significant or does significand with a D mean something else?

[@SwapnilBhartiya]

Linus looks good when he reads from teleprompter :)

[@soullessanger4001]

Just imagine what all the people named "Tom Smith" thought when they were just checking their phones.

[@outsideredge]

We all want MOAR POWAH

[@luceatlux7087]

i finally understand the difference between my Dad's 486sx vs my 486dx back in the day.

[@KnucklesPlaysMC]

at 56 seconds, there were math problems floating in the background. Where did you get that?

[@kinzokushirogane1594]

Can people stop fucking saying the titan V has 110 Tflops? It's not the same kind of benchmark as any of the other GPU's on the market. The actual value is like 12Tflops

[@Jahus]

FLOPS: Measure of how many disappointing 60 dollar games your card would run before it dies.

[@Rymden98]

Linus please make a OS and files transfer guide for SSD to m.2. Your old guide doesn´t work.

[@Pico2199]

How the hell does a techquickie relate to "World's fastest talking man sings Michael Jackson's BAD in 20 seconds" in the up next queue? Come on KZbin, this isn't the first time you did this to me... with the same damn video too.

[@rexodexo56]

Dryice 2199 both are conveying a lot of information in a short amount of time?

[@phenomanII]

I do recommend you watch it though. I've seen it twice now and I actually enjoyed it :)

[@Toymachiner27]

Dude, it’s been so off for me recently. I legit keep getting roblox and Minecraft videos suggested and I have never watched any videos on it

[@Pico2199]

sasor098 so I haven't watched anything like that since before youtube. I remember that guy from micro machine commercials and how people confused him with the Scatman.

[@Pico2199]

I wouldn't consider Michael Jackson's bad to be information. Also, the video after that was a slow mo thing.

[@CardThrower-rb6eg]

"X=2+Y" the background equations looking very floating point right now

[@sorbet7216]

I have the biggest megahertz in the world.

[@itsFiftyy]

holy shit

[@smogstreaming]

And believe me, I know big megahertz when I see them. I have this friend of mine, good friend, and he tells me all the time that my megahertz is the biggest and the best. America's enemies have some terribly tiny megahertz. They are desperate to come in here and chip away at the foundation of what makes this country so great; The megahertz! It's a world-known fact that we have the biggest, the best, the most informed, the most well-equipped, the most mega herz out there!! (I'm so sorry guys. Just coultn't help myself. o _ o ).

[@amrqo7097]

Shpee 999 megahertz more than that is a gigahert

[@yw5617]

Please make hardware acceleration explained

[@matheusspable]

Anton is a wonderful person. Not a supercomputer.

[@bahaaeldin2656]

2 years later I am finally here

[@whotfevencares]

WE MISSED YOU BUD, were you busy crunching some floats?

[@bahaaeldin2656]

@@whotfevencares yeah sorry had some issues