Adaptive sub-patches system, apparatus and method

A system comprising:

• a power source to supply power to the system;
• a graphics pipeline apparatus to send geometry data to a hull shader unit to determine whether the geometry data includes a patch, the hull shader unit comprising a hull shader kernel to generate adaptive sub-patches for subdivision surfaces associated with the patch, the hull shader kernel to specify how to decompose the patch into a number of sub-patches based on performance and/or scene perspectives, wherein each sub-patch includes sub-patch tessellation factors;
• a hardware fixed-function tessellator to generate sub-patch tessellations for the sub-patches based on the sub-patch tessellation factors and generate sub-patch specifications based on the sub-patch tessellations;
• and
• a display subsystem communicatively coupled to the graphics pipeline apparatus, wherein the display subsystem visually presents one or more scenes associated with the sub-patch tessellations and the sub-patch specifications.