Typically, while you are developing a scene, you will do many low resolution test renders to see if objects are placed properly. Often this low resolution version doesn't give you sufficient detail and you have to render the scene again at a higher resolution. A feature called mosaic preview solves this problem by automatically rendering your image in several passes.

The early passes paint a rough overview of the entire image using large blocks of pixels that look like mosaic tiles. The image is then refined using higher resolutions on subsequent passes. This display method very quickly displays the entire image at a low resolution, letting you look for any major problems with the scene. As it refines the image, you can concentrate on more details, like shadows and textures. You don't have to wait for a full resolution render to find problems, since you can interrupt the rendering early and fix the scene, or if things look good, you can let it continue and render the scene at high quality and resolution.