Modern abacuses have a wooden frame surrounding thirteen columns of beads. Wooden dividers separate the spaces, and wires run down the middle of each column. Each column is divided into two rows, one small, with two beads on the wire,, and one large, with five beads. The first column is ones; the next is tens, then hundreds, thousands, and so on. The beads in the small row each represent five units, and the other row's beads represent one. The abacus can be used to perform addition, subtraction,, and multiplication.

The original Chinese name for the abacus is suanpan, which means "counting board". The name abacus,, in English, is derived from the Greek word abax, which means "table or board covered with dust".

The abacus is still widely used in China and Japan. It is used for nearly every calculating task in China, including in banks and people's houses, and Asian schools usually teach students how to use an abacus, probably because they are inexpensive, widespread, and are fairly simple to use. In 1946, a contest was held between a Japanese abacist named Kiyoshu Matzukai and a computer. The contest lasted two days. The abacist gained an unmistakable victory over the computer. The abacus was invented over three thousand years ago in China, and thanks to the inventor's ingenuity, it is an extremely useful tool that will probably be used for another few thousand years.