Linux 4.11 Release - Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architecture

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.11:

So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm, and I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now.

We still had various smaller fixes the last week, but nothing that made me go “hmm..”. Shortlog appended for people who want to peruse the details, but it’s a mix all over, with about half being drivers (networking dominates, but some sound fixlets too), with the rest being some arch updates, generic networking, and filesystem (nfs[d]) fixes. But it’s all really small, which is what I like to see the last week of the release cycle.

And with this, the merge window is obviously open. I already have two pull request for 4.12 in my inbox, I expect that overnight I’ll get a lot more.

Linux 4.10 added Virtual GPU support, perf c2c’ tool, improved writeback management, a faster initial WiFi connection (802.11ai), and more.

Some notable changes for Linux 4.11 include:

Pluggable IO schedulers framework in the multiqueue block layer – The Linux block layer is know to have different IO schedulers (deadline, cfq, noop, etc). In Linux 3.13, the block layer added a new multiqueue design that performs better with modern hardware (eg. SSD, NVM). However, this new multiqueue design didn’t include support for pluggable IO schedulers. This release solves that problem with the merge of a multiqueue-ready IO scheduling framework. A port of the deadline scheduler has also been added (more IO schedulers will be added in the future)
Support for OPAL drives – The Opal Storage Specification is a set of specifications for features of data storage devices that enhance their security. For example, it defines a way of encrypting the stored data so that an unauthorized person who gains possession of the device cannot see the data. This release adds Linux support for Opal nvme enabled controllers. It enables users to setup/unlock/lock locking ranges for SED devices using the Opal protocol.
Support for the SMC-R protocol (RFC7609) – This release includes the initial part of the implementation of the “Shared Memory Communications-RDMA” (SMC-R) protocol as defined in RFC7609. SMC-R is an IBM protocol that provides RDMA capabilities over RoCE transparently for applications exploiting TCP sockets. While SMC-R does not aim to replace TCP, it taps a wealth of existing data center TCP socket applications to become more efficient without the need for rewriting them. A new socket protocol family PF_SMC is introduced. There are no changes required to applications using the sockets API for TCP stream sockets other than the specification of the new socket family AF_SMC. Unmodified applications can be used by means of a dynamic preload shared library.
Intel Bay Trail (and Cherry Trail) improvements – Intel HDMI audio support, patchsets for AXP288 PMIC, I2C driver, and C-state support to avoid freezes.

New features and bug fixes specific to ARM architecture:

Allwinner:
- Allwinner A23 – Audio codec device tree changes
- Allwinner A31 – SPDIF output support
- Allwinner A33 – cpufreq support, Audio codec support
- Allwinner A64 – MMC Support, USB support
- Allwinner A80 – sunxi-ng style clock support
- Allwinner H2+ – New SoC variant, similar to H3 (mostly with a different, lower end VPU)
- Allwinner H3 – Audio codec device tree changes, SPDIF output support
- Allwinner V3s – New SoC support, USB PHY driver, pinctrl driver, CCU driver
- New boards & devices – LicheePi One, Orange Pi Zero, LicheePi Zero, Banana Pi M64, Beelink X2

Rockchip:
- Renamed RK1108 to RV1108
- Clock drivers – New driver for RK3328, and non-critical fixes and clk id additions
- Tweaks for Rockchip GRF (General Register File) usage (kitchensink misc register range on the SoCs)
- thermal, eDP, pinctrl enhancements
- PCI – add Rockchip system power management support
- Add machine driver for RK3288 boards that use analog/HDMI audio

Amlogic
- Add support for Amlogic Meson I2C controller
- Add SAR ADC driver
- Add ADC laddered keys to meson-gxbb-p200 board
- Add configurable RGMII TX delay to fix/improve Gigabit Ethernet performance on some boards
- Add pinctrl nodes for HDMI HPD and DDC pins modes for Amlogic Meson GXL and GXBB SoCs
- New hardware: WeTek TV boxes
Samsung
- Add USB 3.0 support in Exynos 5433
- Removed clock driver for Samsung Exynos4415 SoCs
- TM2 touchkey, Exynos5433 HDMI and power management improvements
- Added Samsung Exynos4412 Prime SoC
- Removed Samsung Exynos 4412 SoC
- Added audio on Odroid-X board
- Samsung Device Tree updates:
  - Add necessary initial configuration for clocks of display subsystem. Till now it worked mostly thanks to bootloader.
  - Use macro definitions instead of hard-coded values for pinctrl on Exynos7.
  - Enable USB 3.0 (DWC3) on Exynos7.
  - Add descriptive user-friendly label names for power domains. This makes debugging easier
  - Use proper drive strengths on Exynos7.
  - Use bigger reserved memory region for Multi Format Codec on all Exynos chipsets so it could decode FullHD easily
  - Cleanup from old MACHs in s5pv210.
  - Enable IP_MULTICAST for libnss-mdns
  - Add bus frequency and voltage scalling on Exynos5433 TM2 device (along with necessary bus nodes and Platform Performance Monitoring Unit on Exynos5433).
  - Use macros for pinctrl settings on Exynos5433.
  - Create common DTSI between Exynos5433 TM2E and TM2E.
Qualcomm
- Added coresight, gyro/accelerometer, hdmi to Qualcomm MSM8916 SoC
- Clock drivers – Updates to Qualcomm IPQ4019 CPU clks and general PLL support, Qualcomm MSM8974 RPM
- Errata workarounds for Qualcomm’s Falkor CPU
- Qualcomm L2 Cache PMU driver
- Qualcomm SMCCC firmware quirk
- Qualcomm PM8xxx ADC bindings
- Add USB HSIC and HS phy driver for Qualcomm’s SoC
- Device Tree Changes:
  - Add Coresight components for APQ8064
  - Fixup PM8058 nodes
  - Add APQ8060 gyro and accel support
  - Enable SD600 HDMI support
  - Add RIVA supprort for Sony Yuga and SD600
  - Add PM8821 support
  - Add MSM8974 ADSP, USB gadget, SMD, and SMP2P support
  - Fix IPQ8064 clock frequencies
  - Enable APQ8060 Dragonboard related devices
  - Add Vol+ support for DB820C and APQ8016
  - Add HDMI audio support for APQ8016
  - Fix DB820C GPIO pinctrl name
  - etc…
Mediatek
- Mediatek MT2701 – Added clocks, iommu, spi, nand, adc, thermal
- Added Mediatek MT8173 thermal
- Added Mediatek IR remote receiver
GPU – Add Mali Utgard bindings; the ARM Mali Utgard GPU family is embedded into a number of SoCs from Allwinner, Amlogic, Mediatek or Rockchip
Other new ARM hardware platforms and SoCs:
- Marvell – SolidRun MACCHIATOBin board, Marvell Prestera DX packet processors
- Broadcom – BCM958712DxXMC NorthStar2 reference board
- HiSilicon – Kirin960/Hi3660 SoC, and HiKey960 development board
- NXP – LS1012a SoC with three reference board; SoMs: Is.IoT MX6UL, SavageBoard, Engicam i.Core; Liebherr (LWN) monitor 6;
- Microchip/Atmel – SAMA5d36ek Reference platform
- Texas Instruments – Beaglebone Green Wireless and Black Wireless, phyCORE-AM335x System on Module
- Lego Mindstorms EV3
- “Romulus” baseboard management controller for OpenPower
- Axentia TSE-850 Data Radio Channel (DARC) encoder
- Luxul XAP-1410 and XWR-1200 wireless access points
- New revision of “vf610-zii” Zodiac Inflight Innovations board

Finally here are some of the change made to MIPS architecture in Linux 4.11:

PCI: Register controllers in the right order to avoid a PCI error
KGDB: Use kernel context for sleeping threads
smp-cps: Fix potentially uninitialised value of core
KASLR: Fix build
ELF: Fix BUG() warning in arch_check_elf
Fix modversioning of _mcount symbol
fix out-of-tree defconfig target builds
cevt-r4k: Fix out-of-bounds array access
perf: fix deadlock
Malta: Fix i8259 irqchip setup
Lantiq – Fix adding xbar resoures causing a panic
Loongson3
- Some Loongson 3A don’t identify themselves as having an FTLB so hardwire that knowledge into CPU probing.
- Handle Loongson 3 TLB peculiarities in the fast path of the RDHWR emulation.
- Fix invalid FTLB entries with huge page on VTLB+FTLB platforms
- Add missing calculation of S-cache and V-cache cache-way size
Ralink – Fix typos in rt3883 pinctrl data
Generic:
- Force o32 fp64 support on 32bit MIPS64r6 kernels
- Yet another build fix after the linux/sched.h changes
- Wire up statx system call
- Fix stack unwinding after introduction of IRQ stack
- Fix spinlock code to build even for microMIPS with recent binutils
SMP-CPS: Fix retrieval of VPE mask on big endian CPUs”

Read Linux 4.11 changelog – with comments only – generated using git log v4.10..v4.11 --stat, to get the full list of changes. You may also want to checkout Linux 4.11 changelog on kernelnewbies.org.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.