Dictionary.net

A term coined by Ivan Sutherland ca. 1970 to refer to awell-known effect whereby function in a computing systemfamily is migrated out to special-purpose peripheralhardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward morecomputing power as it does its job, then somebody notices thatit is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors inthe architecture and folds the function back into the mainCPU, at which point the cycle begins again.Several iterations of this cycle have been observed ingraphics-processor (blitter) design, and at least one ortwo in communications and floating-point processors. Alsoknown as "the Wheel of Life", "the Wheel of Samsara" and othervariations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea.