A graphics processing device comprises a set of compute units to execute multiple threads of a workload, a cache coupled with the set of compute units, and a prefetcher to prefetch instructions associated with the workload. The prefetcher is configured to use a thread dispatch command that is used to dispatch threads to execute a kernel to prefetch instructions, parameters, and/or constants that will be used during execution of the kernel. Prefetch operations for the kernel can then occur concurrently with thread dispatch operations.