Hardware accelerator

Computational Infrastructure; Software Engineering

noun phrase

Definition: A specialized hardware unit or device designed to execute a limited set of functions more efficiently than a general-purpose processor, thereby improving the performance, latency, throughput, or energy efficiency of a system or one of its subsystems [NVIDIA].

Example in context: “This paper presents a design of hardware accelerator for algorithms of rough set theory.” [Nowak et al. 2025]

Synonyms: accelerator device; hardware acceleration unit

Related terms: coprocessor; AI accelerator; FPGA accelerator; accelerated computing