Patent ID: 8330762

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a plurality of graphics processing units each providing rendered graphics data to one or more users; an input circuit receiving video stream data from a data store, the data including one or more individual encoded video streams, each encoded video stream of the one or more individual encoded video streams organized into groups of frames including intra-coded frames that are decoded without information from other frames within a group, and inter-coded frames that are decoded using information from at least one other frame within the group; and a frame processing component: examining a received video stream for a first graphics processing unit; initiating decoding of the received video stream on a second graphics processing unit upon receipt of a data migration signal, wherein the data migration signal is received upon a triggering event selected from the group consisting of: failure of the first graphics processing unit, scheduled maintenance of the first graphics processing unit, and excessive workload sustained by the first graphics processing unit; decoding and rendering the video stream by the second graphics processing unit upon receipt of a successive intra-coded frame of the video stream if an amount of time between the triggering event and the successive intra-coded frame does not exceed a defined threshold time value; and stopping decoding of the received video stream on the first graphics processing unit.