In modern computing , hardware acceleration is used everywhere. It has become as familiar and natural as the expansion of processor instructions MMX. But this was not always so. The first timid steps of developers and programmers to promote new features, an ambiguous assessment of the computer community, and then - recognition ... all this was.
Now, hardware acceleration is present in almost every device and program. Sometimes, even where no one will look for him. Want a graphics card that supports hardware acceleration? You are welcome! And the sound adapter? Yes, any number! Well,
what about the network card? And it has the ability to offload the
central processor from the routine work with data packets!
Hardware acceleration is widely used in various programs for processing multimedia streams. Thanks to this, it is possible to significantly reduce the time spent. Not everyone knows that browser developers have long included in their products the ability to speed up work with graphics (rendering complex pages) through the use of hardware acceleration of basic functions through a video card.
What kind of acceleration is this? In fact, everything is simple. According to the general scheme of the computer device, all mathematical calculations are performed by the
central processing unit (CPU). So, the command to calculate the amount of "2 + 2" program is converted into machine codes and transferred to him for processing. But since the processor performs a huge amount of calculations every second, with the addition of a new task, its performance is slightly reduced - the kernel is loading. Developers have long sought to
increase the speed of calculations without increasing the power of the CPU, and the introduction of auxiliary hardware capabilities made this possible.
Imagine a graphics card ten years ago. It was logic and video memory. Any information in one way or another connected with the image was recorded from an array of memory cells and, in a certain way, was converted into a signal “understandable” to the monitor circuits.
Any change in the image, even the banal movement of a point on a colored background is the result of the central processor. He calculated the coordinates, the offset, and the cycle repeated. If the point is not one, then the number of calculations increases. In addition, the processor already has "something to do." The result is a slowdown.
To solve this, a specialized processor was started on the video card, which was engaged only in graphics, which allowed freeing up the resources of the universal CPU. A similar method began to be used to work with sound - audio chips "learned" to speed up some functions; network - adapters have acquired a specialized processor, etc.
You can disable or enable hardware acceleration in the application, but only if such a possibility is provided by the programmer. For example, you can control the graphics acceleration in Windows XP as follows: you need to call the properties of the desktop and follow the path "Options - Advanced - Diagnostics". The slider located in this window allows you to completely or partially disable hardware acceleration throughout the system. Sometimes this is necessary to solve compatibility issues.