What are hardware accelerators?

[Remya_sk]

What are hardware accelerators?
Why is it needed?
What are the types of hardware accelerators?
Comparison on hardware accelerators and general purpose CPU?
Difference between hardware accelerators and software accelerators?
What is the function of hardware accelerators in graphics and image processing?
How does embedded software interact with an accelerator?

 

[srizbf]

hardware accelerators are for graphics speedup.

without hwacclrtr , cpu has to generate all pixels in a screen.
it is a time consuming operation for high graphics contents.

instead , cpu gives commands to hwaccltrs , to generate the pixel infos.

in essence , cpu load for graphics is transferred to hwacclrts.

infact , hwacclrts are a cpu by itself(in terms of processing) but their main job is to receive commands fro main cpu and generate pixel data.
with dsp help they generate faster image data to be shown.