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AMD issued an extension to LLVM that specifically targets RyZen and purportedly optimizes for it.

Here's a story about the compiler: https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news ... 0-Released

It's free as in not costing coin but it's not generally considered an open source project (even thought LLVM is) because it has a restrictive license.

Phoronix got around to running a bunch of benchmarks with the compiler:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... aocc&num=1

As you can see, it generally tracks the performance that plain LLVM generates for RyZen, meaning it beats GCC some of the time and loses in other benchmarks where GCC is generally ahead of LLVM anyway.

So the bad news is that this RyZen-specific compiler isn't setting the world on fire, but the good news is that if you are already using standard compilers that ship with Linux anyway, you aren't missing out on any major RyZen performance boosts.

May as well link to the newer article on the subject. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-aocc-optimizations&num=1

It's still not going to light the world on fire, but it's getting closer. That said, on the graphics front, using the RadeonSI/Gallium3D drivers will consume more CPU time than using Nvidia closed-source drivers.

Maybe things will get better around kernel 4.12 or 4.13? It took until 4.11 for some Ryzen optimizations, and support for the Realtek audio chip used in many AMD and Intel motherboards to finally arrive, so who knows what the future will hold?

Disclaimer: Before you call me an AMD fanboy, I couldn't care less between whether they or Nvidia win. They only things I'm keeping a sharp eye on from AMD, are the Threadripper and Epyc CPUs, since they might give me the best bang for my buck for the VM heavy workloads I run. I'm mildly interested in Vega, but not enough to lose any sleep over.

Doctor Venture wrote:

Maybe things will get better around kernel 4.12 or 4.13? It took until 4.11 for some Ryzen optimizations, and support for the Realtek audio chip used in many AMD and Intel motherboards to finally arrive, so who knows what the future will hold?

The audio issue puzzles me. It's not like PC integrated audio codec tech has progressed meaningfully in the past decade or more; what could they possibly be changing in the silicon that breaks backward compatibility with existing drivers?

Your guess is as good as mine, but for some odd reason, Linux didn't support the ALC299 or ALCI220 codecs until kernel 4.11. This affected not just Ryzen owners, but also folks who had Intel motherboards with the Z270 chipset.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.11-Sound-Updates