A program using a computer's hardware to perform some functions **more efficiently** than capable in the software Hardware acceleration refers to the process by which an application will **offload** certain computing tasks onto **specialized hardware components** within the system, enabling **greater efficiency** than is possible in software running on a general-purpose [[CPU]] alone. Operations can be computed faster in application specific hardware designed / programmed to compute the operation rather than specified in software & performed on a GPU Application Specific Hardware Acceleration - Graphics - GPU - Sound Processing - Sound Card - AI --> Visual Processing Unit (VPU) / Physical Neural Network (PNN) #quantum