Hardware Acceleration

What Does Hardware Acceleration Mean?

Hardware acceleration is a technique in which a computer’s hardware is forced to perform faster than the standard computing architecture of a normal central processing unit (CPU). It is used with heavy computing tasks and operations, like graphics or video processing.

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Techopedia Explains Hardware Acceleration

Hardware acceleration is forced and controlled by the program or software that requests extra computing power. For example, Mozilla Firefox supports and can initiate hardware acceleration for websites that are media-rich or have high definition (HD) graphics.

A hardware accelerator is a device that implements hardware acceleration and includes modern graphic and video cards.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…