APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR COMBINING THREAD WARPS WITH COMPATIBLE EXECUTION MASKS FOR SIMULTANEOUS EXECUTION AND INCREASED LANE UTILIZATION

A method for executing instructions on a single-program, multiple-data processor system having a fixed number of execution lanes, including: scheduling a primary instruction for execution with a first wave of multiple data; assigning the first wave to a corresponding primary subset of the execution lanes; scheduling a secondary instruction having a second wave of multiple data, such that the second wave fits in lanes that are unused by the primary subset of lanes; assigning the second wave to a corresponding secondary subset of the lanes; fetching the primary and secondary instructions; configuring the execution lanes such that the primary subset is responsive to the primary instruction and the secondary subset is simultaneously responsive to the secondary instruction; and simultaneously executing the primary and secondary instructions in the execution lanes.