[BoorishBears]

Can you give an example?

[rbanffy]

Having dedicated computers to control peripherals (like a RAID controller or a network card).

To be fair, Atari and Commodore computers already had that.

[wglb]

It actually predates that. The CDC 3500 series had a separately programmable I/O controller.

And the marvelous 1403 printer would often be driven by a 1401.

[rbanffy]

HTTP form submission and 3270 screens.

[dbcurtis]

Hardware hyperthreading. See CDC 6600