Instead of a device-siloed software application, Amazon Silk deploys a split-architecture. All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud.

—The browser built into the new Kindle Fire can offload processing tasks to cloud-based computers. Given how (relatively) underpowered the processors are in mobile devices, this is an interesting solution to some rendering issues that tablets and phones face. Everything from DNS resolution to parsing CSS to executing Javascript can be handled by a beefy computer on a super fast network. Amazon calls it a “limitless cache” aimed at solving some of the last-mile issues that devices are running into beyond just bandwidth.