Optimise

A programming term.

Programming is a mixture of art and science. The science bit is sticking to the correct syntax and programming rules, the art bit is finding creative ways of undertaking a programming task in the most efficient way possible.

This effort of making software run as efficiently as possible is called 'optimisation'. Optimisation means to make maximum use of the resources available.

For example, many graphic cards have hardware features built-in that makes rendering an image very fast. But the software running on the card has to coded specifically to take advantage of those features, otherwise the code will be 'sub-optimal' with inferior performance.