computation

Definition

Both the act of computing and the amount of it required, usually quantified as FLOPs, wall-clock time or memory traffic. Alongside accuracy it is the axis modern papers report on, and 'reducing computation' normally means an algorithmic saving — fewer operations for the same output — rather than running the same algorithm on faster hardware. Speed-up claims routinely conflate the two.

Explainers using this term

• Optimal Transport — The Mathematics of Moving DistributionsSinkhorn Distances: Lightspeed Computation of Optimal Transport