Editing accelerator card

{{title|Accelerator Card}}
[[File:knights ferry accelerator card.png|right|250px|thumb|Intel's {{intel|Knights Ferry|l=arch}} accelerator card featuring 72 [[x86]] cores for accelerating massively parallel workloads.]]
[[File:nec vector engine accelerator.png|right|250px|thumb|NEC's vector engine accelerator card featuring 8 cores each capable of 307 GFLOPS/core for accelerating vector processing.]] 
[[File:Intel Arria 10 GX Programmable acceleration card.png|right|250px|thumb|Intel's Programmable accelerator card containing an Arria 10 GX FPGA.]]
'''Accelerator cards''' are specialty [[expansion card]]s designed primarily for the acceleration of domain-specific workloads such as vector operations, [[artificial neural network|ANNs]], cryptography, and graphics.

== Overview ==
Accelerator cards are a special type of [[expansion cards]] designed specifically for the purpose of accelerating various workloads. Generally, those cards are plugged via a PCIe slot and are seen as standard PCIe devices by the [[host processor]].  Using special library code, usually provided by the card manufacturer, programs can instruct the accelerator card to perform various operations. Those operations are then performed by the card and the result is sent back to the host processor.

Typically, but not always, accelerator cards make use of custom [[ASIC]] chips (known as ''[[accelerators]]'') in order to execute such workloads far more efficiently than what a normal [[general-purpose microprocessor]] would be capable of. Typically, those operations are done quicker ("accelerated") on the card than the processor could perform on its own because the accelerator incorporate specialized logic to perform a set of complex operations in a way that cannot be implemented in software as easily or as efficiently. Various [[FPGA]]-based accelerator cards also exist allowing the user to implement his own [[hardware acceleration]] functions.

== Types ==
Types of accelerator cards:

* AI Accelerator Cards
* Compression Accelerator Cards
* Cryptographic Accelerator Cards
** SSL Accelerator Cards
* DSP Accelerator Cards
* Programmable Accelerator Cards
* Graphics Accelerator Cards
* Vector Accelerator Cards

== Form factors ==
Traditionally, accelerator cards used the standard PCIe card form factor. More recently, accelerator cards became available in a number of other form factors such as an [[M.2]] PCIe board, [[OCP Accelerator Module]], and [[EDSFF]] ruler cards.

== Cards ==
{{empty section}}

== See also ==
* [[acceleration]]

[[Category:hardware acceleration]]