Linux kernel 4.11 features and changes
Graphics changes
Linux kernel 4.11 release brings more maturity to AMDGPU power management. It’s also faster for RADV Vulkan. Intel DRM driver is now capable of handling DisplayPort MST audio. Intel has also enabled frame-buffer compression by default for Skylake and newer hardware. TinyDRM has also been merged.
Initial Gemini Lake support
Linux kernel 4.11 also introduced the initial support for Intel’s Gemini Lake chips.
Scalable swapping for solid state drives
For making the swapping of solid state disks easier and more scalable, Linux kernel 4.11 is here with new changes.
Support for SMC-R protocol
Kernel 4.11 brings initial part of the “Shared Memory Communications-RDMA” (SMC-R) protocol implementation. For those who don’t know, SMC-R is an IBM invention that lets VMs share memory and fasten the communications.
Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 support improved
Thanks to the improvements made in Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 support, more number of users can take advantage of this feature on their systems and make better use of the CPU cores.
Support for Pluggable IO schedulers in multiqueue block layer
Linux kernel 3.13 release added a new multi-queue design to the Linux block layer for better performance with newer hardware. Linux kernel 4.11 release adds the support for pluggable IO schedulers.
New perf ftrace tool
The addition of perf ftrace tool is a noticeable Linux kernel 4.11 feature. This new tool intends to become the simple perf front-end for the already present ftrace interface.
Other hardware changes in Linux 4.11
The other Linux 4.11 features and changes are support for OPAL self-encrypting disk drive standard, optimizations for different filesystems, some new F2FS functionality, new Raspberry Pi drives, better TPM2 support, MD RAID optimizations, etc.
