Content about Messaging, Data Fabrics and Local Networking

Ahead of its official launch - which Low-Latency.com will of course be all over - NYSE Technologies' managing director for enterprise software Brian Doherty has been discussing the latest version of the Data Fabric messaging product.  MultiVerb is one of the key enhancements, combining multicast and RDMA paradigms.

Intel Corporation today announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems, a privately held fabless semiconductor company that designs Ethernet switch silicon for data center network providers.

Tervela, the leading provider of high-speed, no-loss data fabric infrastructure for mission-critical applications, today announced the general availability of the Tervela version 5.0 suite of products. This new big data movement platform, available in both hardware and software form factors, represents the first time that a hardware-accelerated advanced messaging platform can be downloaded and run on a standard developer-class PC.

Chelsio Communications, a leading provider of 10Gb Ethernet Unified Wire adapters, ASICs and unified storage solutions, today announced the availability of its WireDirect technology: software modules that enable direct wire access from user space to the Chelsio T4 network adapter with complete bypass of the kernel, which results in an ultra-low, three microsecond deterministic latency 10Gb Ethernet solution for high frequency trading and other delay-sensitive applications.

The low-latency arms race continues … Dell used SIFMA to promote the performance of its servers running TIBCO’s latest FTL (Faster Than Light) messaging middleware. The bottom line: 2.5 million messages/second processed with a mean latency of 13 microseconds.

In recent years, a combination of regulatory reforms, market structure evolution and technology innovation have combined to create a new paradigm for the global financial trading markets; one in which the speed at which transactions can be executed is fundamental to the success of market participants.

Put simply, for such a participant – be it an exchange operator, a broker or a trading firm – to win in the new electronic marketplace of complex algorithmic and high-frequency trading (HFT), they have to be faster than their competition. And the margin that separates the winners from the also rans is now measured in microseconds, with nanoseconds not too far off.

Impulse Accelerated Technologies today announced the addition of GigE and 10GigE FPGA development kits for financial traders. The kits are for firms that develop proof of concept and full production FPGA Auto Trading systems. Included with the kits are a working reference design, training, and available engineering services to increase first hardware project success rates.

Penguin Computing, experts in high performance computing (HPC), along with Solarflare, the company pioneering 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), announced today that Penguin Computing is designing and delivering Solarflare’s networking products as part of its financial services solutions. This partnership will bring together leading technologies for customers in the high-performance computing and data storage markets in the US and Europe, who are looking to increase network performance and reduce latency to gain a competitive advantage.

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today announced the general availability of Mellanox VMA 5.0 with enhanced TCP acceleration support, providing a unified messaging acceleration platform for all popular networking communications methods such as TCP, Multicast and UDP unicast. Mellanox’s VMA message accelerator has been deployed and is providing immediate return-on-investment benefits in multiple stock exchanges, trading firms and capital market institutions worldwide.

Last week, I chaired A-Team's first Business & Technology of Low-Latency Trading event - #BTLLT for the twittersphere - at The Brewery (a former Whitbread Brewery, it's now an established events venue), and these are a few geeky highlights from my day.

Oracle is focusing on building a Java-based pre-engineered trading bundle this year in order to facilitate fast deployment and “fewer moving parts” to deal with for its customers, explained Ian Pearl, global lead of the vendor’s Capital Markets business, to delegates at this week’s Business & Technology of Low-Latency Trading (BTLLT) event in London. This development is aimed at tackling the challenge of performance versus time to market in the low latency trading architecture space.

This white paper was written by Informatica, HP, and Mellanox Technologies.

The securities trading market is experiencing rapid growth in volume and complexity with a greater reliance on trading software, which is supported by sophisticated algorithms. As this market grows, so do the trading volumes, bringing existing IT infrastructure systems to their limits.