The interface allows computer software to offload common 2D-drawing operations (line-draw, color-fill, and block copies via a blitter) onto the 8514 hardware.

This frees the host CPU for other tasks, and greatly improves the speed of redrawing a graphics visual (such as a pie-chart or CAD-illustration).

It was an optional upgrade to the Micro Channel architecture based PS/2's Video Graphics Array (VGA), and was delivered within three months of PS/2's introduction.

Coprocessor boards (such as the TARGA Truevision series) were designed around special CPU or digital signal processor chips which were programmable.

[citation needed] Even though the 8514 was not a best-seller, it created a market for fixed-function PC graphics accelerators which grew exponentially in the early 1990s.