Patent ID: 8154554

Claim:
A computer device, comprising: a processing unit having a vertex execution unit configured to execute vertex shader microcode and a fragment execution unit configured to execute fragment shader microcode; and a software program configured to: receive a shader program comprised of both assembly instructions configured to be executed by a specific target execution unit within the processing unit and a set of assembly instructions from a unified shader program assembly instruction set that is configured to be executed by each target execution unit within the processing unit, including a vertex execution unit and a fragment execution unit, determine, based on a tag in the shader program, the specific target execution unit within the processing unit that is supposed to execute the shader program, wherein the specific target execution unit comprises either the vertex execution unit or the fragment execution unit; and convert, by a single unified microcode assembler regardless of whether the shader program relates to vertex shading or fragment shading, the shader program into shader microcode for execution by the specific target execution unit within the processing unit.