GPU

abbreviation or noun

ˌjē-(ˌ)pē-ˈyü 

variants or less commonly gpu

plural GPUs also gpus

: a specialized CPU designed to efficiently perform calculations for generating computer graphics

A GPU can deliver hundreds of billions of operations per second—some GPUs more than a teraflop, or a trillion operations per second—while requiring only slightly more electrical power and cooling than a CPU.

—Andrea Di Blas et al.

Examples of GPU in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

And so that is still at the very beginning, the next frontier for us in AI, is what’s called the scale-up piece of the network as fiber replaces copper, fiber optics photons replace electrons, deeper and deeper in those GPU neural networks. —Fortune Editors, Fortune, 22 Oct. 2025

Today, cloud-native architectures and graphic processing unit (GPU) acceleration are helping narrow these gaps. —Ni Tao, Interesting Engineering, 21 Oct. 2025

Apple claims that the total AI performance of the MacBook Pro is four times better than the M4 model when looking at CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine combined, and these numbers bear that out. —PC Magazine, 21 Oct. 2025

Nvidia has been expanding in Taiwan, partnering with Foxconn and the government to build a 10,000-Blackwell GPU AI training and supercomputing facility in the south, opening a larger Taipei office, and collaborating with Taiwanese companies such as TSMC to build an AI infrastructure ecosystem. —Yu-Tzu Chiu, IEEE Spectrum, 2 Oct. 2025

Word History

Etymology

graphics processing unit

First Known Use

1973, in the meaning defined above