Hardware acceleration

The term hardware acceleration refers to taking a task that's normally sent to the CPU and delegating it to another hardware component that's better suited.

For example, discrete GPUs (video cards) are faster at mathematical calculations and 3D rendering than the CPU (central processing unit). So, even though the CPU can handle tasks involving these processes, it may be faster and more efficient for the graphics card.

Devices utilized by hardware acceleration

The following list contains some devices that utilize hardware acceleration to improve your computer or mobile device performance.

• Video card
• Sound card
• NIC (network interface card)
• SoC (system on a chip)

Graphics accelerator card, Hardware, Hardware terms, Video accelerator, Video card terms