Background:

• Discusses the scarcity of open-source GPU infrastructure and motivates the need for an ISA extension.

Proposals:

• Introduces a minimally invasive extension to the RISC-V ISA that supports graphics and GPGPUs.
• Outlines the Vortex project: a soft GPU supporting OpenCL and OpenGL on FPGA.

Implementation and Performance:

• Vortex implemented on Stratix 10 FPGA, achieving 25.6 GFlops at 200MHz.
• Supports machine learning, graph analytics, and graphics rendering.

Impact and Opinion: This proposal and its implementation could drastically reduce barriers to GPU development and foster a more robust open-source ecosystem. It’s a substantial step forward in breaking the status quo of proprietary GPU designs.