(
Thermal
Design
Power) The amount of thermal energy in watts that a cooling system must dissipate from a computer's CPU. The TDP is provided by the chip manufacturer to the system vendor, which is expected to build a case that accommodates the chip's thermal requirements.
TDP for a laptop CPU is greater than a desktop computer because there is less space for air to circulate inside the case. High-resolution video editing require high-performance CPUs and have a higher TDP.
TDP is also used to measure the hundreds of watts required for GPUs to train and run AI models. See
TGP.