Here’s what Symbolic Sound has to say about it: Symbolic Sound’s APUs are designed to delivers high quality, real-time audio processing, while freeing up computing and memory resources on your computer that can be dedicated to other tasks. Similar to using a GPU for real-time graphics processing. Symbolic Sound has introduced a new Audio Processing Unit (APU), Pacamara Ristretto, that they say offers a 2.5 times jump in performance, a 20% reduction in cost, cooler operating temperature, expanded connectivity options, and seamless inter-application routing of audio and MIDI to/from applications running on a host computer.