Patent ID: 11861760
Assignee: ARM LIMITED
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 18:
19. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing software code which when executing on a processor performs a method of operating a tile-based graphics processor that is operable to execute a graphics processing pipeline, the graphics processing pipeline including at least a primitive providing stage and one or more subsequent processing stages, wherein the primitive providing stage is operable to provide primitives to be processed for a rendering tile to the one or more subsequent processing stages for processing, and the one or more subsequent processing stages are operable to perform one or more processing steps in respect of primitives provided for processing by the primitive providing stage; the method comprising:
the primitive providing stage providing a set of primitives to be processed for a rendering tile to the one or more subsequent processing stages of the graphics processing pipeline for processing; and
when there are no more primitives of the set of primitives left for the primitive providing stage to provide for processing to the one or more subsequent processing stages of the graphics processing pipeline for the rendering tile, determining whether one or more processing steps to be performed by the one or more subsequent processing stages of the graphics processing pipeline in respect of at least one primitive of the set of primitives previously provided for processing by the primitive providing stage for the rendering tile need not be performed; and
when it is determined that one or more processing steps to be performed by the one or more subsequent processing stages of the graphics processing pipeline in respect of at least one primitive of the set of primitives previously provided for processing by the primitive providing stage for the rendering tile need not be performed, causing the one or more subsequent processing stages of the graphics processing pipeline to omit performing the one or more processing steps in respect of the at least one primitive.