Server optimization features such as SSL termination and compression technologies use specialized hardware to offload compute-intensive operations from the servers to the application delivery controllers.
The focus of the hardware is to significantly speed up data processing for large, data crunching operations like compression, image recognition, and search functions.
"Social play is so important to PlayStation 4 that we've added in hardware to support it, in the form of dedicated, always-on video compression and decompression systems, " he said.