Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/3172
Date of Award
3-2025
Degree Name
MS in Electrical Engineering
Department/Program
Electrical Engineering
College
College of Engineering
Advisor
Andrew Danowitz
Advisor Department
Electrical Engineering
Advisor College
College of Engineering
Abstract
The Vortex project from Georgia Institute of Technology was created to provide an open-source hardware and software GPGPU research platform based on RISC-V. Skybox was introduced as an extension to Vortex to provide dedicated support for 3D graphics rendering acceleration as a complete GPU platform. This work presents contributions to the render output unit of Skybox, including the development of a blend unit, cache bypassing mechanisms, and performance monitoring metrics. With these, Skybox has succeeded in its goal of accelerating graphics rendering on RISC-V platforms. This work also establishes a foundation for adapting Vortex to low-cost embedded platforms such as the PYNQ-Z2 (based on the AMD Zynq 7020 SoC), detailing boot configuration, host processor communication interfaces, and configuration tradeoffs for resource-constrained FPGAs.