# FLOPS

**[FLOPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS)** (Floating-Point Operations Per Second) measures the rate at which a processor performs floating-point arithmetic, and is the standard unit for comparing raw compute throughput in HPC. Peak FLOPS is the theoretical maximum based on hardware specs; achieved FLOPS on real code is almost always lower due to memory stalls, branches, and non-arithmetic instructions.

FLOPS figures are meaningless without specifying precision (FP64, FP32, FP16), since throughput can differ by an order of magnitude between precision levels on modern hardware.

## Example

Peak FLOPS computation for one x86 core.

```
Peak = cores × clock (Hz) × FLOPs/cycle
     = 1 × 3.0e9 Hz × (4 lanes × 2 FLOPs × 2 ports) = 48 GFLOPS
```