Patent ID: 7385940

Claim:
An apparatus for using a plurality of processors to support a media conference, comprising: a system resource management (SRM) module coupled to one or more mixing processors and a plurality of media transformation processors, the SRM module operable to receive a request to support a media conference and, in response, to allocate the media conference to at least a first mixing processor and a first media transformation processors the SRM module further operable to communicate to the mixing processor control information identifying the first media transformation processor; wherein the first mixing processor is operable to mix input media information associated with two or more first participants to generate output media information for communication to a second participant, wherein the first mixing processor communicates the output media information to the first media transformation processor identified by the control information received from the SRM module; wherein the first media transformation processor is coupled to the mixing processor and operable to receive the output media information from the mixing processor, to encode the output media information to generate an output data stream, and to communicate the output data stream to the second participant's end-user device; wherein the mixing processor and the first media transformation processor are separate hardware components.