Graphics processing unit and method of graphics processing

A tile-based graphics processor comprising one or more execution units, instruction processing circuitry, and a comparator;

• wherein the one or more execution units comprise circuitry configured to receive from the processor data for processing associated with at least one tile to produce output data;
• wherein the instruction processing circuitry is configured to:
• receive an instruction to process data to produce an output,
• detect an indicator that a portion of the output is to be processed with redundancy, the indicator further indicating a redundancy policy selected for the portion of the output, wherein the redundancy policy comprises temporal redundancy and/or spatial redundancy, and
• associate the indicator with at least one tile associated with the portion of the output;
• thereby to cause the one or more execution units to duplicate, according to the selected redundancy policy, processing of the data associated with the at least one tile to produce output data for each of a first and second instance of the at least one tile;
• wherein the comparator comprises:
• circuitry for comparing output data for the first and second instances of the at least one tile generated by the one or more execution units of the graphics processor, and
• circuitry configured to communicate a signal responsive to detection of a mismatch between the output data of the first and second instances.

A method implemented by a driver on a host processor;

• wherein the method includes responsive to an Application Programming Interface (API) command indicating a portion of data is to be processed with redundancy communicating by the driver to a graphics processor configured as a tile-based graphics processor:
• an instruction to process the data to produce an output;
• and
• an indicator that the portion of the output is to be processed with redundancy, the indicator further indicating a redundancy policy selected for the portion of the output, wherein the redundancy policy comprises temporal redundancy and/or spatial redundancy,
• wherein communicating the instruction and the indicator, causes the graphics processor to carry out the method of:
• receiving an instruction to process data to produce an output according to a set of tiles within a rendering operation;
• detecting the indicator that a portion of the data is to be processed with redundancy and the redundancy policy selected for the portion of the output;
• associating the indicator with at least one tile containing the portion of data;
• duplicating, according to the selected redundancy policy, the processing of the data associated with the at least one tile by one or more execution units of the graphics processor to produce output data for each of a first and a second instance of the at least one tile;
• comparing output data for the first and second instance of the at least one tile generated by the one or more execution units of the graphics processor;
• and
• responsive to detection of a mismatch between the output data of the first and second instances, communicating a signal.