Cryptographic accelerator

Because many servers' system loads consist mostly of cryptographic operations, this can greatly increase performance.

Intel's AES-NI is by far the most common cryptographic accelerator in commodity hardware.

The BSD family of systems has the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework (OCF), Linux systems have the Crypto API, Solaris OS has the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (SCF) and Microsoft Windows has the Microsoft CryptoAPI.

Some cryptographic accelerators offer new machine instructions and can therefore be used directly by programs.

Almost all Unix-like operating systems use OpenSSL or the fork LibreSSL as their cryptography library.