What sort of acceleration does openCV use ? How can it process so fast?

I've been using openCV quite a bit lately and I'm amazed at how fast it can process开发者_开发知识库 arrays. Is it using a special type of optimization or relying on special features of the CPU ? I'm on an Intel CPU btw.

OpenCV uses the Intel Integrated Performance Primitives under the hood. this library relies on aggressive optimization as well as careful use of special CPU features (SSE, SSE2, ...)