Activ Outlines Plans for FPGA-, AMD-Based Ticker Solution

In 2003 a company was founded as a spin-off from Washington University to develop some of these new computing techniques. The company in question was Exegy. (There was some movement of talent between Reuters St Louis and Exegy in late 2005 including Scott Parsons, now the Chief Scientist at Exegy). By the summer of 2006 Exegy had introduced hardware acceleration to the world of market data (SIA show demonstration). I joined the company myself in November last year. Hardware acceleration is revolutionary in that it overturns conventional IT solutions to solving market data problems. Because it is a big change there will be some resistance and legitimate questions about the technology. However, the economics are compelling. For example, the old approach to ever escalating market date rates is to scale horizontally by buying more commodity computers. But the continuing growth of market data makes this an increasingly expensive proposition. Well designed hardware acceleration ticker plant technology can massively increase message per second headroom and reduce latency and allow the infusion of calculated values to the data stream output. So you can have your cake and eat it and get a cherry on top. The early adopters are in the trading community. Traders and competing exchanges demand the fastest possible delivery, analysis and execution of market data. It will be a brave financial institution that chooses to ignore the innovation. This revolution is similar to the introduction of new materials technology in the 1970s to world of tennis. Once well designed metal and graphite models were introduced in the 1970s no professional player could afford to be under-equipped with old style wood racquets. The new material racquets were expensive in the early days but the power improvement and the much larger sweet spot made them indispensable. Anyone remember the Dunlop Maxply? The last one was produced in 1983.