wheel of reincarnation

Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing
system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for
speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does
its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two
asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into
the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again. Several iterations of
this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one
or two in communications and floating-point processors. Also known as the
Wheel of Life , the Wheel of Samsara , and other variations of the basic
Hindu/Buddhist theological idea. See also blitter.

