Patent ID: 8922566

Claim:
A portable graphics card of a data processing device, comprising: a graphics processor; an application interface; a battery; and a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface communicatively coupled with the graphics processor, the USB interface being configured to transfer a graphics instruction from the data processing device to the application interface, the data processing device being external to the portable graphics card, the graphics processor and the application interface together being configured to: in response to receiving the graphics instruction at the application interface, store in memory, by the application interface, an identifier associated with the graphics instruction, process, by the graphics processor, the graphics instruction on behalf of the data processing device to perform a process intensive task through the portable graphics card, provide, by the graphics processor to the application interface, an indication of completion of processing the graphics instruction, associate, by the application interface, the indication of completion of processing the graphics instruction with the identifier stored in the memory, and in response to associating the indication of completion with the identifier stored in the memory, transfer a result of processing the graphics instruction to the data processing device using the USB interface, and the battery being configured to at least partially power the graphics processor to process the graphics instruction, wherein the portable graphics card is implemented with a modular architecture to allow for at least one of upgrading and replacement of individual functional modules thereof without a need to entirely replace the portable graphics card, the replacement of the individual functional modules being facilitated through a capability to mix and match components of the individual functional modules, and the modular architecture being configured to utilize standard interfaces between the individual functional modules.