Pipelines are common in both hardware and software. For example, application processors and GPUs use hardware pipelines. The graphics standard OpenGL ES is based on a virtual pipeline.

In a pipeline, a complete process is divided into a series of stages. A data element is processed in one stage and the results are then passed to the next stage.

Because of the sequential nature of a pipeline, only one stage is used at a time by a particular data element. This means that the other stages can process other data elements.

You can use software pipelines in your application to process different data elements.

For example, a game requires many different operations to happen. A game might use a similar pipeline to this:

1. The input is read from the player.
2. The game logic computes the progress of the game.
3. The scene objects are moved based on the results of the game logic.
4. The physics engine computes positions of all objects in the scene.
5. The game uses OpenGL ES to draw objects on the screen.