A method is described. The method includes compiling program code targeted for an image processor having programmable stencil processors composed of respective two-dimensional execution lane and shift register circuit structures. The program code is to implement a directed acyclic graph and is composed of multiple kernels that are to execute on respective ones of the stencil processors, wherein the compiling includes any of: recognizing there are a different number of kernels in the program code than stencil processors in the image processor; recognizing that at least one of the kernels is more computationally intensive than another one of the kernels; and, recognizing that the program code has resource requirements that exceed the image processor's memory capacity. The compiling further includes in response to any of the recognizing above performing any of: horizontal fusion of kernels; vertical fusion of kernels; fission of one of the kernels into multiple kernels; spatial partitioning of a kernel into multiple spatially partitioned kernels; splitting the directed acyclic graph into smaller graphs.