Definition
Plain language
How much work a system gets done per second, regardless of whether it's the useful kind.
As stated in the literature
The raw rate of completed operations or tokens per unit time; contrasted with goodput, which counts only work completing usefully within deadlines and can collapse even while throughput stays high.
Why it matters: It measures raw productivity but can look healthy even when little of the work actually helps, which is why useful-work metrics matter too.
For example, a server might churn out thousands of tokens per second even while many of those responses arrive too late to be useful.
Heard on the show
“So a long, aggressive draft that's a clear win for one person can drag down throughput for the whole crowd.”Episode 179 — How DeepSeek Made One User Faster Without Slowing Down the Crowd