Hardware acceleration refers to the process of offloading certain computing tasks from a general-purpose CPU to specialized hardware components within a system, such as a GPU, audio card, or memory card. This offloading enables greater efficiency and improved performance for specific functions, such as computer graphics, digital signal processing, and AI data processing
. It is used in various applications, including computer graphics, digital signal processing, AI, and machine learning, and is designed to perform specific functions more efficiently than software running on a general-purpose CPU alone
. Modern processors are often multi-core and feature parallel "single- instruction, multiple-data" (SIMD) units, but hardware acceleration still yields benefits by offloading processing tasks to specialized hardware, speeding up the execution of complex algorithms and resource-intensive operations
