- Bolt Graphics is building a RISC-V based GPU to challenge Nvidia
- CUDA support on RISC-V could lower software barriers for alternative accelerators
- Zeus targets path tracing, HPC, and large memory workloads over traditional shaders
Bolt Graphics is pressing ahead with its plan to challenge Nvidia and AMD by building a graphics processor around a RISC-V controlled architecture rather than a conventional GPU design.
The Sunnyvale, California based startup’s Zeus architecture is a ground up rethink of graphics, rendering, and high performance compute workloads.
Instead of relying on traditional shader heavy designs, Zeus combines fixed function hardware for rasterization, ray tracing, and path tracing with an in house SIMD engine.
A standalone Linux system
Command and scheduling duties are handled by a RISC-V processor that also functions as a general purpose CPU, allowing Zeus to run as a standalone Linux system rather than relying entirely on a host processor.
With CUDA no longer tied exclusively to x86 or Arm hosts, a RISC-V based accelerator stack becomes more practical for developers already invested in Nvidia’s software ecosystem.
Zeus cards support Vulkan and DirectX 12, alongside engines such as Unreal and Unity, while also supporting common programming environments used in HPC, including Python, Fortran, and OSL compiled through LLVM.
The prototype add in card uses a PCIe 5.0 x16 interface and pairs LPDDR5X graphics memory with DDR5 SODIMM slots for the RISC-V processor.
Depending on configuration, total memory capacity can reach 384GB on a single board.
Bolt plans several Zeus variants, including the Zeus 1c26-032, Zeus 2c26-064, Zeus 2c26-128, and Zeus 4c26-256, spanning single chip PCIe cards and multi chip 2U server designs with combined memory capacity exceeding 2TB.
Networking is addressed through integrated 400Gbps and 800Gbps interfaces intended for render farms and clustered workloads. Those interfaces are designed to allow direct GPU to GPU connections without separate network interface cards.
The board also includes BMC and IPMI hardware, features more commonly found in servers than consumer graphics cards.
Power draw is restrained for its class, with the card relying on a single 8 pin PCIe connector for up to 225W, while higher end server configurations scale up to 500W.
Bolt has made some intriguing (pinch of salt) performance claims, including path tracing throughput multiple times higher than Nvidia’s RTX 5090 and extreme gains in FP64 simulation workloads.
Those figures are naturally enough based on internal testing and simulations, with real hardware validation still pending.
If CUDA on RISC-V gains traction, Bolt’s approach could face fewer software barriers than similar efforts in the past.
That still leaves execution risk of course, but the technical direction suggests Bolt is betting on ecosystem shifts rather than brute force scale alone.
Via TechPowerUp
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