Technical Glossary (1935 terms)

Standardized hardware and benchmark definitions across smartphones, laptops, CPUs, GPUs, SoCs, and tablets.

• Super Retina — Apple's brand name for its higher-resolution OLED displays. [ DISPLAY ]
• Super Retina XDR — Apple's high-brightness OLED display used in Pro iPhones. [ DISPLAY ]
• SuperPi — A legacy single-threaded Pi-computation benchmark. [ BENCHMARK ]
• Surface Laptop 7 — Microsoft's ARM laptop with the Snapdragon X Elite — launched in 2024. [ PRODUCT LINES ]
• Surface Pro 11 — Microsoft's ARM-based tablet with the Snapdragon X Elite — launched in 2024. [ PRODUCT LINES ]
• Synopsys — US company providing EDA tools used to design chips. [ BRANDS ]
• SysMark — SysMark is a real-world application benchmark for PCs. [ BENCHMARK ]
• T2 chip — Apple's T2 chip handled security, storage, and media tasks on Intel Macs. [ CHIPS ]
• T4 security chip — A T-series security chip that verifies boot and stores secrets. [ CHIPS ]
• TAA — Temporal Anti-Aliasing — a temporal smoothing method. [ GAMING ]
• TBW — Terabytes Written — the rated endurance of an SSD. [ STORAGE ]
• TCL CSOT — TCL's display subsidiary making LCD and OLED panels. [ BRANDS ]
• TDP — Sustained power/heat a chip is designed for; higher allows higher performance with more cooling. [ PERFORMANCE ]
• TFT — Thin-Film Transistor — the active-matrix technology behind most LCD panels. [ DISPLAY ]
• TGP — The power budget a laptop GPU can draw; higher TGP usually means more sustained gaming performance. [ PERFORMANCE ]
• TLC — Triple-Level Cell NAND — three bits per cell, common in SSDs. [ STORAGE ]
• TMUs — GPU units that apply textures to 3D surfaces; more TMUs improve textured rendering. [ GAMING ]
• TN — Twisted Nematic — a fast, cheap LCD panel type with poor viewing angles. [ DISPLAY ]
• TOPS — Trillions of Operations Per Second — a measure of AI/Neural engine performance. [ CHIPS ]
• TOPS score — A TOPS score measures AI performance in trillions of operations per second. [ BENCHMARK ]
• TRIM — A command that tells an SSD which blocks are unused so it can erase them. [ STORAGE ]
• TSMC — The world's leading chip foundry, fabricating Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD chips. [ PERFORMANCE ]
• TWS — True Wireless Stereo, earbuds with no wire between them. [ AUDIO ]
• TalkBack — Google's screen reader built into the Android system. [ SOFTWARE ]
• Tandem OLED — A stacked, dual-layer OLED design that boosts brightness and longevity. [ DISPLAY ]
• Telephoto Lens — A long-focal-length lens for close-up zoom shots without digital cropping. [ CAMERA ]
• Tempered Glass — Chemically hardened glass used as screen protection on phones and tablets. [ DURABILITY ]
• Tempest — Tempest was an Apple CPU core design used in early chips. [ CHIPS ]
• Tensor Core — NVIDIA's specialized AI matrix-multiplication hardware. [ CHIPS ]
• Tensor G2 — Google's second-generation SoC (launched in 2022). [ CHIPS ]
• Tensor G3 — Google's SoC used in the Pixel 8 series (launched in 2023). [ CHIPS ]
• Tensor G4 — Google's SoC used in the Pixel 9 series (launched in 2024). [ CHIPS ]
• Tensor G5 — Google's first fully custom SoC (launched in 2025). [ CHIPS ]
• Terabyte — A terabyte is one thousand gigabytes, a large storage measure. [ GENERAL ]
• Tetra2 — Samsung's 16-to-1 pixel-binning technology for very high-resolution sensors. [ CAMERA ]
• Texas Instruments — US chipmaker known for analog chips, DSPs, and calculators. [ BRANDS ]
• Thermal Throttling — Chips slowing down when hot to stay within thermal limits; higher stability % means less slowdown. [ PERFORMANCE ]
• ThinkPad — Lenovo's business laptop line known for durability and keyboards. [ PRODUCT LINES ]
• ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 — Lenovo's premium thin business laptop — launched in 2023. [ PRODUCT LINES ]
• ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 — Lenovo's updated premium ultrabook — launched in 2024. [ PRODUCT LINES ]
• Threadripper — AMD's high-core-count enthusiast workstation processors. [ PRODUCT LINES ]
• Threads — How many tasks a CPU can run in parallel; with SMT, each core handles two threads. [ PERFORMANCE ]
• Thunder — Thunder was an ARM CPU core design used in some mobile SoCs. [ CHIPS ]
• Thunderbolt — A very fast USB-C port standard (40 Gbps) for docks, external GPUs, displays, and storage. [ PORTS ]
• Thunderbolt 5 — The 2024 Thunderbolt generation supporting up to 80-120 Gbps. [ PORTS ]
• Thunderbolt port — A high-speed port combining data, video, and power, using a USB-C connector. [ PORTS ]
• Tiger Lake — Tiger Lake was an Intel laptop CPU generation from around 2020. [ CHIPS ]
• Titan M2 — Titan M2 is Google's security chip in Pixel phones. [ CHIPS ]
• ToF — A Time-of-Flight sensor that measures depth using light travel time. [ CAMERA ]
• ToF Sensor — A depth sensor that measures distance to subjects, improving AR and portrait effects. [ CAMERA ]