-flop Also -flops.
Measures of computing speed.
[A partial acronym of floating-point operations (per second).]
A floating-point operation in computing is a calculation carried out on two numbers whose format allows the binary equivalent of the decimal point to be moved about, or ‘float’. The speed of a computer can be measured by counting the rate at which it can do such calculations. The original form of this suffix was -flops, as in megaflops, gigaflops, or teraflops (see the entry Number words) but the final s (for second) was frequently taken to indicate a plural and is now often dropped.
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