In computing, hardware acceleration is the use of hardware to perform some function faster than is possible in software running on the normal (general purpose) CPU. Examples of hardware acceleration include blitting acceleration functionality in graphics processing units (GPUs) and instructions for complex operations in CPUs. Memory (Random Access Memory) Look up computing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Hardware is the general term that is used to describe physical artifacts of a technology. ... Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ... Bit blit (bitblt, blitting etc. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. ... Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6. ...
Normally, processors are sequential, and instructions are executed one by one. Various techniques are used to improve performance; hardware acceleration is one of them. The main difference between hardware and software is concurrency, allowing hardware to be much faster than software. Hardware accelerators are designed for computationally intensive software code. Depending upon granularity, hardware acceleration can vary from a small functional unit to a large functional block like motion estimation in MPEG2.
The hardware that performs the acceleration, when in a separate unit from the CPU, is referred to as a hardware accelerator, or often more specifically as graphics accelerator or floating-point accelerator, etc. Those terms, however, are older and have been replaced with less descriptive terms like video card or graphics card. A GeForce 4 4200-based graphics card A graphics card or video card is a component of a computer which is designed to convert a logical representation of an image stored in memory to a signal that can be used as input for a display medium, most often a monitor... A floating point unit (FPU) is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. ... A video card, (also referred to as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, graphics card, and numerous other terms), is an item of personal computer hardware whose function is to generate and output images to a display. ... A graphics/video/display card/board/adapter is a computer component designed to convert the logical representation of visual information into a signal that can be used as input for a display medium. ...
In computing, hardwareacceleration is the use of hardware to perform some function faster than is possible in software running on the normal (general purpose) CPU.
Examples of hardwareacceleration include blitting acceleration functionality in graphics processing units (GPUs) and instructions for complex operations in CPUs.
The hardware that performs the acceleration, when in a separate unit from the CPU, is referred to as a hardwareaccelerator, or often more specifically as graphics accelerator or floating-point accelerator, etc. Those terms, however, are outdated and have been replaced with more descriptive terms like video card or graphics card.
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