Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer-storage media are provided for shader assembly and computation. Shader functions can be determined without specialization to a particular shader model and finalizing or resource bindings. Embodiments of the present invention facilitate final shader assembly and resource binding through linking before the shader is presented to a GPU driver. In this way, embodiments of the present invention alleviate combinatorial shader explosion and provide protection of intellectual property by not requiring distribution or generation of source code.