Patent ID: 8120611

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: a built-in graphics controller configured to perform display control for a display device; and a central processing unit (CPU) configured to process information, wherein, when a graphics card is installed, the CPU instructs the built-in graphics controller to execute information processing for other than the display control processing in accordance with an information processing situation of the CPU, the information processing situation based on an application intended to be operated, an availability ratio of the CPU, and a preset starting up condition, the graphics card includes an external graphics controller which uses a dedicated memory built in the external graphics controller when processing information, the CPU instructs the built-in graphics controller to perform transcode processing, and the external graphics controller performs display processing in parallel with the transcode processing, the built-in graphics controller is configured to transfer decoded image data to the external graphics controller, the built-in graphics controller is further configured to execute transcode processing, the built-in graphics controller is further configured to execute at least one of motion compensation processing or inverse discrete cosine transform on encoded data and store the processed data in a main memory, the CPU is configured to execute subpicture processing on the encoded data and to store the processed subpicture data in a memory of the external graphics card, and the CPU is further configured to retrieve the data from each of the main memory and the external graphics card memory, and re-encode the retrieved data into a different format.