Content about Hardware Acceleration

PLDA, the industry leader in interconnect IP, today unveiled its 10Gb TCP/IP Hardware stack IP core. PLDA’s QuickTCP IP solution is a 100% RTL designed IP, compliant with the IEEE802.3 specification and supporting the ARP, IPv4, ICMP, and TCP protocols. QuickTCP features an industry-standard AMBA AXI4 user interface that enables instant integration into either Altera-based or Xilinx-based FPGA designs. Designed with utmost performance in mind, PLDA’s QuickTCP IP provides extremely low latency of less than 150ns to the FPGA fabric, and its highly scalable architecture provides a seamless migration path to 40G and beyond.

Fixnetix is tapping BittWare, and its latest Altera Stratix V FPGA-based network cards, to support the second phase of its iX-eCute trade execution and pre-trade risk service. The move represents a boost for Altera, since iX-eCute originally leveraged FPGAs from rival Xilinx.

Celoxica, producers of leading hardware-accelerated, low latency trading and market data solutions, has extended market coverage in European cash markets with the launch of feed handlers and single digit microsecond connectivity to the NYSE Euronext Cash Equity and Xetra exchanges. The firm has also announced its readiness to support the Chi-X user migration to the BATS Europe technology platform.

Impulse Accelerated Technologies today announced an Arista Networks version of the Impulse C-to-FPGA optimizing compiler, in a kit providing everything needed for Arista users to compile their C algorithms to the FPGA integrated in Arista’s new 7124FX AppSwitch. Impulse C is a C-language development environment for FPGAs that allows software algorithms to be quickly and efficiently implemented in programmable hardware.

Intilop, a pioneer and a recognized leader in providing complex Ultra-Low latency networking IP building blocks and systems, today announced their new 3rd Gen 10G Ultra-Low-Latency Ethernet Media Access controller (EMAC) IP cores based around enhanced Architecture. These Industry leading Ultra-Low latency 10G EMAC IP products have fully integrated scalable BRAMs and optional PCIe/DMA Engines. These EMAC IP’s can also be combined inside a system to provide Ultra-High performance NIC functionality.

No two trading firms are alike, and neither are the trading strategies they adopt for their proprietary business and investment management clients. Different models, different asset classes, different markets, different geographies = different strategies = different requirements for latency, and different appetites for investment in technology.

* Peter Harris, Editor, Low-Latency.com (Moderator)
* James Andrews, High Performance Messaging Consultant, Informatica
* Louis Lovas, Director of Solutions and Business Development, OneMarketData
* Frederic Ponzo, Managing Partner, GreySpark Partners
* Dan Solak, Global Head of Elektron Data, Trading, Thomson Reuters

With trading systems latency now routinely measured in single-digit microseconds, the focus is shifting to maintaining its consistency, eliminating latency spikes even at the extreme outlier measurements. With such jitter impacting the effectiveness of many trading algorithms, vendors of all components in a trading architecture, as well as latency measurement specialists, are engaged in a new race to zero.

* Peter Harris, Editor, Low-Latency.com (Moderator)
* Mohammad Darwish, Chief Executive Officer, AdvancedIO Systems
* Dave Quarrell, IT Solution Architect, OnX Enterprise Solutions
* Benjamin Stephens, Electronic Trading & Quantitative Prime Brokerage Origination, Nomura International
* Henry Young, Founder & CEO, TS-Associates

Sun Microsystems might have coined the the slogan "The Network Is The Computer" but it is Arista Networks that is today delivering on the concept with its first Application Switch, which embeds FPGA processing into a switch so that business logic can really be run in the networking fabric itself with lowest-latency data access.

BittWare, the leader in Altera-based FPGA COTS boards, announced today at the Low-Latency Summit 2012 in London, the introduction of two new PCIe boards to their “S5” family of products. The S5-PCIe-HQ and S5-PCIe-HR are half-length PCIe COTS boards ideal for financial acceleration applications such as high frequency trading. Based on Altera’s Stratix V GX/GS FPGA, the boards provide ultra-low latency performance with 10GigE straight to the FPGA (no external PHY) saving hundreds of nanoseconds in transaction time, all while offering the maximum processing performance per watt

Recent announcements by both Celoxica and Redline Trading Solutions point to increasingly latency-sensitive high frequency trading strategies being deployed in the foreign exchange markets. To date, hardware acceleration has been focused on equities, futures and options trading.

With just a week to go before the London Low-Latency Summit, I thought it was the right time to preview what the agenda will bring.  Space at the new venue - the America Square Conference Centre - is limited but there's room for a few more delegates, so be sure to register today. Now, with the public service announcement/commercial over ...

Redline Trading Solutions (www.redlinetrading.com), a leading provider of ultra-low latency trading solutions, announced today at TradeTech 2012 a major move into Foreign Exchange (FX) markets with the integration of 20 new FX venues into its market-leading InRush Accelerated Ticker Plant and Execution Gateway. The support covers major FX ECNs (electronic communication networks) as well as most of the world’s largest banks.