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

This announcement represents a major milestone in the software and hardware needed to efficiently process inference queries, disaggregating inference processing into two workloads with a GPU tailored for each in the case of long-context windows greater than one million tokens. —Karl Freund, Forbes.com, 9 Sep. 2025

The company says these updates will allow its new phones to have three times the GPU computation as last year’s phones. —Kif Leswing, CNBC, 9 Sep. 2025

The Pro models also run the A19 Pro chip, but feature a 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU. —Chloe Albanesius, PC Magazine, 9 Sep. 2025

The nitty gritty of iPhone Air Tim Millet, vice president of platform architecture at Apple, said the iPhone Air will feature Apple's new A19 Pro, a 5-core GPU and 6-core CPU. —Greta Cross, USA Today, 9 Sep. 2025

Word History

Etymology

graphics processing unit

First Known Use

1973, in the meaning defined above