Chapter 10. Hardware Enablement

The Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) is a technology that enables I/O adapters to coherently access host memory, and thus ensures improved performance. This update adds the cxlflash driver, which provides support for IBM's CAPI flash block adapter. (BZ#1182021)

With this update, the Multimedia Card (MMC) kernel subsystem has been upgraded to upstream version 4.5, which fixes multiple bugs and also enables the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 kernel to use the embedded MMC (eMMC) interface version 5.0. In addition, the update improves the suspend and resume functionality of MMC devices, as well as their general stability. (BZ#1297039)

This update adds support for the internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol (iWARP) mapper to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. The iWARP mapper is a user-space service that enables the following iWARP drivers to claim TCP ports using the standard socket interface:

Note that both the iw_cm and ib_core kernel modules need to be loaded for the iWarp mapper service (iwpmd) to start successfully. (BZ#1331651)

This update adds the memkind package, which provides a user-extensible heap manager library, built as an extension of the jemalloc memory allocator. This library enables partitioning of the memory heap located between memory types that are defined when the operating system policies are applied to virtual address ranges. In addition, memkind enables the user to control memory partition features and allocate memory with a specified set of memory features selected. (BZ#1210910)

The driver for the Advanced Host Controlled Interface (AHCI) has been updated for per-port message-signaled interrupt (MSI-X) vectors. Note that this applies only to controllers that support the feature. (BZ#1286946)

The Runtime Instrumentation feature, previously available as a Technology Preview, is now fully supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on IBM z Systems. Runtime Instrumentation enables advanced analysis and execution for a number of user-space applications available with the IBM zEnterprise EC12 system. (BZ#1115947)