Zeus GPU from startup Bolt Graphics promises to run circles around the competition

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Something to look forward to: Bolt Graphics, a startup based in Sunnyvale, California, has unveiled a new GPU design that it claims can smoke competitors in rendering, high-performance computing (HPC), and gaming workloads. It’s a bold claim – and one that will require solid proof.

The Zeus GPU is said to be “orders of magnitude” faster than existing solutions on the market. Thanks to its expandable memory, Zeus cards can accommodate up to 384 GB in a PCIe card or up to 2.25 TB per card in a 2U server. A full rack of Zeus 2U servers can be paired with as much as 180 TB of memory, Bolt Graphics claims.

Zeus is also claimed to be the first GPU with natively integrated, high-speed 400 GbE and 800 GbE interfaces, enabling GPUs to connect at massive scale.

Bolt claims Zeus users can expect gains of up to 10x in rendering jobs, 6x in FP64 HPC workloads, and up to 300x in electromagnetic wave simulations. The latter is used to help design modern technology products like CT and X-ray scanners, radar sensors, stealth materials, and optical lenses. Faster, larger-scale simulations can accelerate time to market while enhancing the quality of components, products, and systems.

Glowstick, the firm’s real-time path tracer, sounds equally impressive. According to Bolt, a single Zeus PCIe card can support 4K path tracing at up to 120 frames per second in applications such as games and product design. For film industry customers, a cluster of 28 Zeus GPUs can reportedly achieve path tracing performance equivalent to 280 legacy GPUs.

Glowstick will be included with Zeus at no additional cost, we are told, and will support industry standards including MaterialX and OpenUSD.

Bolt Graphics will be performing live demos of Zeus at the upcoming Game Developers Conference, which runs from March 17 through March 21 in San Francisco. Dev kits are expected to go out later this year ahead of mass production scheduled for late 2026, and users can sign up for early access over on Bolt’s website.