hardware encryption

[brainfart@posteo.net]

this is probably not the proper place for this question but i got'a 
start somewhere
this thing about hardware accelerated encryption is a bit of a mystery 
to me
some processors advertise it but how do we know if it's being used
is there a way to test if hardware accelerated encryption is being used 
or if it's just advertising hipe
if i'm encrypting my data and want to reduce the load on the cpu as much 
as possible what processor would be best
maybe someone can point me to the place for such a discussion