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.
@article{arxiv.2505.03102,
title = {Hardware vs. Software Implementation of Warp-Level Features in Vortex RISC-V GPU},
author = {Huanzhi Pu and Rishabh Ravi and Shinnung Jeong and Udit Subramanya and Euijun Chung and Jisheng Zhao and Chihyo Ahn and Hyesoon Kim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.03102},
year = {2025}
}