Efficiency improvements after switching to 17.1 from 17.0

I believe that host channels are only used for supporting emulating io channels from fpga to fpga via Linux named pipes or files on the host. This way, emulating io channels and host channels are essentially the same thing (except named pipes is a Linux only feature). This is supported at least since 17.0 I believe and works well for emulating a multi fpga solution using io channels in my experience.

The new thing that's been added in 17.1 is the "host pipes" which allow for communication between the host and kernel directly, outside of emulation. One of the boards I'm using has 17.1 bsp support from Nallatech which hopefully I can find some time to work on soon.