And not just string compare. There are many operations where general purpose CPUs have problems for giving optimum results when operating with elements of 1 or

And not just string compare. There are many operations where general purpose CPUs have problems for giving optimum results when operating with elements of 1 or 2 bytes at once with dependencies between them. E.g. UTF-8 string search implemented in hardware using the Rabin-Karp algorithm with a simple enough reversible hash window guarantying O(n) time could outperform current string search optimal O(n) implementations by e.g. 16x on CPUs with 128 bit / cycle load capabilities.