The document discusses Gearman, an open source software framework for distributing tasks across multiple machines. It describes how Gearman allows for asynchronous task processing by queuing jobs on a central job server that workers on other machines can pick up. The key advantages of Gearman include high performance, scalability, load balancing, and the ability to perform tasks asynchronously and in parallel. The document also provides code examples of how to use the Gearman PHP client and worker APIs to process jobs. It discusses challenges like handling task failures and explores ways to retry failed tasks, such as by scheduling suspended jobs to be executed again at increasing time intervals.