Hot Chips 2026: CUDA Targets RISC-V – By Chester Lam
Nvidia is working to extend CUDA support to the RISC-V architecture, requiring specific server-grade hardware features to ensure performance. The initiative focuses on standardizing RISC-V platforms to meet the rigorous demands of GPU-accelerated machine learning workloads.
Why it matters
Expanding CUDA to RISC-V could break Nvidia's reliance on x86 and ARM, potentially reshaping the landscape of high-performance computing and AI hardware.
CUDA is a giant for GPU compute, which includes machine learning applications. So far, CUDA supports x86-64 and aarch64 CPUs. Now, Nvidia is looking at extending CUDA support to RISC-V. This move opens the door for RISC-V CPUs to feed GPU compute. Nvidia’s talk focuses on the requirements that RISC-V CPUs must fulfill to work with CUDA. Basically, they want a server-grade CPU and platform.
Nvidia starts by requiring a RVA23 CPU, and adherence to RISC-V’s server SoC and server platform specifications. Those specifications include RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability) features, a specialized security processor, and other baseline features. Nvidia gets most of their server-grade expectations fulfilled by those specifications.
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