Expansion in international markets, automated trading systems and higher transaction volumes are combining to require that vastly higher volumes of data be pushed to far-flung locations around the globe.
Firms in response are adopting hardware and software “accelerators” that speed the flow of data from the source to where it’s needed.
“Customers are looking for real-time performance,” said Mark Skalabrin, chief executive of Redline Trading Solutions, a provider of low-latency market data solutions. “Whether it’s market making or smart-order routing, banks are looking to implement advanced trading functionality.”
Redline Trading Solution’s InRush 3, the latest version of its Accelerated Ticker Plant, has embedded Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge processor product families and advanced network interface technologies to create low latency commercial trading applications, with the need for specialized hardware.
“Historically, InRush has employed hardware acceleration modules,” Skalabrin said. “The big change with this new version is the use of accelerated software which runs on standard X86 cores, reducing overall latency by a factor of three and improving determinism [consistency of latency],” said Skalabrin. “The time between market data coming off the wire and clients receiving updates through our book building software has gone from five microseconds to 1.2 microseconds.”
Geographically dispersed high-speed trading and regulatory compliance are driving the adoption of data fabric technology.
The data fabric provides intelligent routing services to make sure that data gets where it needs to be quickly and efficiently.
“A data fabric is a logical data layer that overlays a company’s existing networks and data sources including databases or cloud services,” said Barry Thompson, chief technology officer at Tervela, a 'data fabric' provider. “It eliminates the need for application developers to write their own layers of functionality.”
Customers overlay Tervela’s hardware and software appliances on top of existing feeds, databases and cloud services to build high-performing distributed applications.
A data fabric provides high-performing, no-loss access to data. Most, if not all, applications in financial markets require this functionality in order to distribute data efficiently and securely across the globe.
The data fabric itself provides intelligent routing services to make sure that data gets where it needs to be quickly and efficiently.
“The fabric knows who is producing it and who needs to consume it, and can adjust internal networking routes in real-time to make sure that data is put on just those routes that lead to authorized consumers,” said Thompson.
Corvil has launched a new range of “appliances” for its CorvilNet Latency Management System, with hardware based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, which the company says will deliver greater than double the performance increase for the same cost.
By doubling the processing capacity, customers will be able to monitor greater volumes of market data and client trade flow.
The new CNE-7300 appliance can perform full decode and analysis on up to two million messages per second. Storage capacity is also more than doubled, allowing data to be retained and analyzed for longer periods of time.
The new appliance will enable Corvil’s customers to deploy latency management more broadly in their organization.
The appliances sit within the trading infrastructure and communicate with each other, either globally or locally, over a network.
