Patent ID: 6985150

Claim:
A control unit for a graphics accelerator, the control unit comprising: a plurality of processing pipelines; a memory configured to store central processing unit information in an allocation table, wherein said information comprises process identifiers, and wherein each process identifier identifies a specific one of one or more central processing units external to the graphics accelerator and one of a plurality of processes executing on the specific one of the central processing units; and a context management unit configured to: (a) receive a graphics command comprising first input data; (b) decode a process identifier from the first input data; and (c) identify an entry E in the allocation table that corresponds to the process identifier; wherein, in response to a first condition, the context management unit is further configured to: (d) reassign ownership of a first of the processing pipelines from a first active entry of the allocation table corresponding to the entry E, and (e) send the graphics command to the first processing pipeline.