Marek Squeezes More Performance Out Of RadeonSI In CPU-Bound Scenarios

[boxie]

Do they have to start from zero again with the new GPU generation?

That entirely depends on what you call a "Generation"

For AMD before GCN there was the VLIW cards (Terascale - r600g) these have completely different architectures and therefore the drivers are completely different for them. AFAIK there is a lot of code reuse between all the GCN cards so a lot less work to bring them up. Currently Navi is slated as the last of the GCN era architectures, with something new and exciting coming down the pipeline ~2020.

If the AMD devs are not already working to bringing that new uArch up, then they would be starting soon - This will be a whole bunch of brand new driver code. Hopefully there will be some reuse of other AMD IP (display, video decode etc) that can be leveraged.