A new technical paper titled “Hardware vs. Software Implementation of Warp-Level Features in Vortex RISC-V GPU” was published by researchers at Georgia Tech and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Abstract
“RISC-V GPUs present a promising path for supporting GPU applications. Traditionally, GPUs achieve high efficiency through the SPMD (Single Program Multiple Data) programming model. However, modern GPU programming increasingly relies on warp-level features, which diverge from the conventional SPMD paradigm. In this paper, we explore how RISC-V GPUs can support these warp-level features both through hardware implementation and via software-only approaches. Our evaluation shows that a hardware implementation achieves up to 4 times geomean IPC speedup in microbenchmarks, while software-based solutions provide a viable alternative for area-constrained scenarios.”
Find the technical paper here. May 2025.
Pu, Huanzhi, Rishabh Ravi, Shinnung Jeong, Udit Subramanya, Euijun Chung, Jisheng Zhao, Chihyo Ahn, and Hyesoon Kim. “Hardware vs. Software Implementation of Warp-Level Features in Vortex RISC-V GPU.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.03102 (2025).
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