z13 feature exploitation - which distribution levels are required

July 6, 2016

z13 feature exploitation - which distribution levels are required

In this post I'll try to summarize which distribution levels, packages, APARs, PTFs etc are needed to exploit a given z13 (performance) function. I expect this to change over time, so please revisit for updates.

For the virtualization layers I use the label "(guest)" for enablement of guest exploitation. So you need at least the given version of the Hipervisor to exploit a certain function in the guest. Of course you also need the respective guest support.

All version levels in the table are minimum levels.

Feature	Red Hat	SUSE	Ubuntu	z/VM (host)	z/VM (guest)	KVM (host)	KVM (guest)
SMT	7.2	12 SP1	16.04	6.3+		1.1.1
SIMD: kernel support – compiled SIMD apps can run	7.2	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+⁽³⁾	1.1.1	1.1.1
z13 tool chain support (compiler, binutils)	tbd	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+		1.1.0
PCI: RoCE 10 Gb Ethernet	7.2⁽¹⁾	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+
PCI: RoCE 10 Gb OFED stack	7.2⁽¹⁾		16.04		6.3+
PCI: zEDC Java⁽⁴⁾	7.2⁽¹⁾	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+
PCI: zEDC zlib preload library	⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾	⁽²⁾	16.04		6.3+
-
-
-

(1) fixes coming, maybe in next fix pack
(2) RYO lib from https://github.com/ibm-genwqe/genwqe-user
(3) z/VM APAR VM65733 required
(4) Java 7 SR9FP30, Java 7.1 SR3FP40, Java8 SR3

(updated 9/30/2016)