A method upon a host device comprising: receiving patch information that includes control point information regarding a first patch; executing, upon a GPU and based upon at least a first portion of the information regarding the first patch as well as on a set of conditions, a compute kernel to generate first tessellation factors associated with the first patch, wherein the compute kernel is accessible by an application that defines the set of conditions for determining when the compute kernel executes; storing first tessellation factors in a first memory; reading the first tessellation factors from the first memory into a tessellator; generating, by the tessellator and based upon the first tessellation factors, a first canonical domain; executing, based upon the first canonical domain and at least a second portion of the information regarding the first patch, a vertex shader to generate first vertex information; generating, based upon first vertex information, first displayable content and storing first displayable content in a buffer; receiving, from the first memory, patch information regarding a second patch that is different from the first patch, wherein the patch information regarding the second patch includes second tessellation factors associated with the second patch, wherein the compute kernel does not execute to generate the second tessellation factors stored within the first memory based on the set of conditions; generating, with the tessellator, a second canonical domain based upon the second tessellation factors; executing, based upon the second canonical domain and at least a portion of the patch information regarding the second patch, the vertex shader to generate second vertex information; generating, based upon second vertex information, second displayable content and storing the second displayable content in the buffer; and sending the second displayable content and the first displayable content to a display device for display. receiving patch information that includes control point information regarding a first patch; executing, upon a GPU and based upon at least a first portion of the information regarding the first patch as well as on a set of conditions, a compute kernel to generate first tessellation factors associated with the first patch, wherein the compute kernel is accessible by an application that defines the set of conditions for determining when the compute kernel executes; storing first tessellation factors in a first memory; reading the first tessellation factors from the first memory into a tessellator; generating, by the tessellator and based upon the first tessellation factors, a first canonical domain; executing, based upon the first canonical domain and at least a second portion of the information regarding the first patch, a vertex shader to generate first vertex information; generating, based upon first vertex information, first displayable content and storing first displayable content in a buffer; receiving, from the first memory, patch information regarding a second patch that is different from the first patch, wherein the patch information regarding the second patch includes second tessellation factors associated with the second patch, wherein the compute kernel does not execute to generate the second tessellation factors stored within the first memory based on the set of conditions; generating, with the tessellator, a second canonical domain based upon the second tessellation factors; executing, based upon the second canonical domain and at least a portion of the patch information regarding the second patch, the vertex shader to generate second vertex information; generating, based upon second vertex information, second displayable content and storing the second displayable content in the buffer; and sending the second displayable content and the first displayable content to a display device for display. <EOS>