Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems that allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory (random-access memory) independently of the central processing unit (CPU). DMA can also be used for "memory to memory" copying or moving of data within memory. DMA can offload expensive memory operations, such as large copies or scatter-gather operations, from the CPU to a dedicated DMA engine. An implementation example is the I/O Acceleration Technology. DMA is of interest in network-on-chip and in-memory computing architectures.