Cisco UCS VIC usNIC RDMA adapter support
Provides the InfiniBand-style verbs interface for Cisco's "user-space NIC" (usNIC) feature on UCS Virtual Interface Cards such as the VIC 1240 and 1280, letting HPC and MPI applications on Cisco blade servers bypass the kernel for low-latency networking over Ethernet. It has been used in Cisco UCS data centers since the early 2010s.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: it serves a low-latency RDMA-style transport on Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards used mainly in HPC clusters on Cisco blade servers. The original VIC 1240/1280 adapters are end-of-sale, but Cisco published a fresh usNIC deployment guide in April 2025 and still ships VIC driver updates, and upstream is active (a probe-path fix in March 2025, RDMA core API work in early 2026). The standard Cisco enic Ethernet driver is not a drop-in replacement.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream maintenance is still active: RDMA/usnic received API modernization work in February 2026.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still gets targeted bug fixes, not just treewide churn: a usnic probe fix was posted in March 2025.
- cisco.com
Cisco published a new usNIC deployment guide in April 2025, indicating the feature remained supported for UCS deployments in 2025.
- cisco.com
Cisco published VIC driver release notes in September 2025 / March 2026, showing the broader VIC software stack remains current.
- cisco.com
The original VIC 1240 hardware called out by the kernel Kconfig is no longer sold, indicating early usNIC-capable adapters are legacy.
- cisco.com
The original VIC 1280 hardware called out by the kernel Kconfig is also no longer sold, reinforcing that this driver mainly serves older Cisco UCS generations.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Shell `rg` on the local tree showed this is a real PCI driver for Cisco VIC/usNIC and Kconfig names VIC 1240/1280. `lore_file_timeline` plus `lore_activity` on `drivers/infiniband/hw/usnic/usnic_ib_main.c` showed substantive linux-rdma work in 2024-2026 and no removal discussion surfaced in the lore checks, so removal/deprecation is not justified. Web search + open on Cisco pages showed the exact 1240/1280 adapters are legacy/no-longer-sold, but Cisco still published a usNIC deployment guide in 2025 and VIC driver release notes in 2025/2026, so the feature appears supported for a narrow UCS/HPC niche rather than broadly dead. No direct upstream replacement driver covers the same Cisco usNIC verbs use case; `enic` is the normal Ethernet path, not a drop-in replacement. Source acquisition: lore URLs from `lore_activity`; Cisco URLs from `web.search_query` and `web.open`.