tensor

[ten-ser, -sawr]

noun

1. Anatomy.,  a muscle that stretches or tightens some part of the body.

2. Mathematics.,  a mathematical entity with components that change in a particular way in a transformation from one coordinate system to another.

tensor

/ tɛnˈsɔːrɪəl, -sɔː, ˈtɛnsə /

noun

1. anatomy any muscle that can cause a part to become firm or tense

2. maths a set of components, functions of the coordinates of any point in space, that transform linearly between coordinate systems. For three-dimensional space there are 3 r components, where r is the rank. A tensor of zero rank is a scalar, of rank one, a vector

tensor

1. A structure of quantities arranged by zero or more indices, such as a scalar (zero indices), a vector (one index), or a matrix (two indices), which is invariant under transformations of coordinates.

2. Any of various muscles that stretch or tighten a body part, as the muscle that acts to tense the soft palate, called the tensor palati.

Other Word Forms

• tensorial adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of tensor¹

1695–1705; < New Latin: stretcher, equivalent to Latin tend ( ere ) to stretch ( tend ¹ ) + -tor -tor, with dt > s

Word History and Origins

Origin of tensor¹

C18: from New Latin, literally: a stretcher

Example Sentences

For one, Alphabet’s tensor processing units, designed alongside Broadcom, were initially designed for internal use.

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Then, as enthusiasm built further for Alphabet’s tensor processing units, which are an alternative to the graphics processing units sold by Nvidia, the company weighed in on that conversation as well.

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Citing a person familiar with the matter, The Information External link reported Monday that Meta is in discussions to use Google’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, in its data centers starting in 2027.

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It is still up in the air whether Meta would use the chips, known as tensor processing units or TPUs, to train its AI models or to do inference, one of the people said.

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The company said it trained its new Gemini 3 model on tensor processing units, its custom chips, and there seems to be growing outside interest in Google’s semiconductor work.

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