petaflop
noun
peta·flop
ˈpe-tə-ˌfläp 
plural petaflops
: a unit of measure for the calculating speed of a computer equal to one quadrillion floating-point operations per second
The high-performance computing goal, known as a petaflop—one thousand trillion calculations per second—has long been viewed as a crucial milestone by military, technical and scientific organizations in the United States, as well as a growing group including Japan, China and the European Union.—
John Markoff
John MarkoffExamples of petaflop in a Sentence
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Our research shows that starting at around 10 16 floating-point operations per second (tens of petaflops) the superconducting computer handily becomes more power efficient than its classical cousin.
—IEEE Spectrum, 15 May 2024
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IEEE Spectrum, 15 May 2024
Cite this Entry
“Petaflop.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/petaflop. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
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