The practice of shifting or supplementing computational tasks, traditionally handled by a primary system, is designed to enhance processing capabilities and efficiency. This can involve delegating specific functions to specialized hardware, cloud-based resources, or dedicated software solutions. For example, a central server managing a database might offload complex analytics queries to a separate data warehouse or utilize a graphics processing unit (GPU) to accelerate video encoding tasks.
The advantages of this approach are multifaceted. It can improve overall system performance by freeing up core resources, reduce latency in critical operations, and enable scalability to accommodate fluctuating demands. Historically, this technique emerged from the need to optimize resource utilization in environments with limited processing power, evolving into a sophisticated strategy for managing complex and data-intensive workloads across distributed systems.
