1. A method of processing graphics data, the method comprising: receiving, by a texture pipe of a graphics processing unit (GPU), texture data; performing, by the texture pipe, a block-based operation on the texture data, wherein the texture data comprises one or more blocks of texels; processing graphics data with shader processors of the GPU concurrently with the texture pipe performing the block-based operation; and outputting, by the texture pipe, a result of performing the block-based operation on the texture data.