Technique for handling data elements stored in an array storage

An apparatus is provided comprising processing circuitry to perform operations, instruction decoder circuitry to decode instructions to control the processing circuitry to perform the operations specified by the instructions, and array storage comprising storage elements to store data elements. The array storage is arranged to store at least one two-dimensional array of data elements accessible to the processing circuitry when performing the operations, each two dimensional array of data elements comprising a plurality of vectors of data elements, where each vector is one dimensional. The instruction decoder circuitry is arranged, in response to decoding a zero vectors instruction that identifies multiple vectors of data elements of a given two dimensional array of data elements within the array storage, to also decode a subsequent accumulate instruction arranged to operate on the identified multiple vectors of data elements, and to control the processing circuitry to perform a non-accumulating variant of an accumulate operation specified by the accumulate instruction to produce result data elements for storing in the identified multiple vectors within the array storage.