EMITTING COHERENT OUTPUT FROM MULTIPLE THREADS FOR PRINTF

One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for emitting coherent output from multiple threads for the printf( )function. Additionally, parallel (not divergent) execution of the threads for the printf( )function is maintained when possible to improve run-time performance. Processing of the printf( )function is separated into two tasks, gathering of the per thread data and formatting the gathered data according to the formatting codes for display. The threads emit a coherent stream of contiguous segments, where each segment includes the format string for the printf( )function and the gathered data for a thread. The coherent stream is written by the threads and read by a display processor. The display processor executes a single thread to format the gathered data according to the format string for display.