Bolt Graphics, a GPU startup from Sunnyvale, California, has introduced its Zeus GPU platform, designed for gaming, rendering, and supercomputer simulations. The company boasts that its Zeus GPU can outperform Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 by around 10 times in path tracing workloads, according to slides published by ServeTheHome.

However, it's important to note that Zeus is limited to path tracing and FP64 compute workloads due to its lack of support for traditional rendering techniques. This means it has little to no chance of becoming one of the best graphics cards.

Zeus relies on the open-source RISC-V ISA and features a multi-chiplet design. The entry-level Zeus 1c26-032 comes with 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory and can be paired with up to 128 GB of DDR5 memory. The most powerful variant, Zeus 4c26-256, integrates four processing units and supports up to 2 TB of DDR5 memory, making it suitable for server implementations.

Despite its impressive specifications, the success of Bolt's Zeus GPUs will largely depend on software support. The company lacks a mature software ecosystem and will need to provide robust developer tools and compiler support to gain traction in the market.

Bolt Graphics plans to release the first developer kits in late 2025, with full production set for late 2026.