What is Hardware Acceleration?

Does anybody know what the benefits are?

Does anybody know when it was introduced?

Hi there, I'm afraid this isn't very scientific as I can't recall the exact details from the time, but sometime ago, I disabled it (on a pair of 2925s) following some comments on here (somewhere) and I noticed a marked improvement.
I tend to leave it disabled if there's an option on the particular model you have (I'm running on 2952s now).
I do however recall it made a noticeable difference to reported latency in connections - and it led me on to find out about the somewhat huge problem with the Puma 6 chipset (I have the Hitron CGNV4 for one WAN connection) which is still awaiting a fix
Might be worth running a series of tests with the option on and off and comparing them ?
Hopefully someone here will come back with an explanation for you (and me !)
Cheers
Simon