Voltaire and IBM offer High Speed Messaging to Help Financial Firms Create Next Generation Solutions

To execute trades faster than other firms and capitalize on the advantages of transparency across multiple markets, your market data delivery platform must efficiently capture real-time data, distribute it in a timely manner and store and retrieve time series data for analysis - all from information that originates from disparate sources and is delivered in multiple formats . Then, your technology must be able to rapidly and cost-effectively distribute the data and messages to people and applications across your organization. Your platform must also enable you to fine-tune processes and functions, so you can reduce costs and efficiently deliver enhanced services that are in synch with the latest opportunities and market dynamics. Any delay in response to the market - even by microseconds - can now make the difference between beating the market and being punished by it. Firms with 24x7 global trading operations must automate to take advantage of market opportunities and to meet fast-changing requirements.

Figure 1: Voltaire InfiniBand and Multi Cast Extension libraries with IBM Websphere Low Latency Messaging delivered over 2.8x the Messages per second delivered over Ethernet for both 45 and 120 bytes message size

Business units across the capital markets are intent on maximizing the effectiveness of their trading algorithms and strategies by advancing the speed with which they receive prices and related data from the global markets.

Voltaire and IBM now offer the ability to deploy a software solution using Voltaire's Multi Cast Engine (MCE) libraries in combination with IBM WebSphere® MQ Low Latency Messaging. This solution provides connectivity and messaging across servers connected by Voltaire's multi-service director-class switches that leverage the InfiniBand standard. The combined solution relies on Voltaire's unique transport library that enables a transparent bypass of traditional OS protocol layers to provide 3-5 higher message throughput, significantly lower latency and loessCPU overhead. By leveraging this solution, businesses can substantially reduce end-to-end application latency as well as gain linear scalability to address higher market data and trading volumes.

IBM recently introduced WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging to extend the WebSphere MQ messaging family as an additional transport designed for low latency, high-throughput message delivery. A number of factors contribute to the high performance of WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging. Proprietary batching technology dynamically optimizes packetization based on throughput, message sizes, receiver and system feedback. Very compact packet headers leave more network bandwidth for application data. And, efficient handling of packet loss reduces the chances of network congestion and congestion management features quickly mitigate potential issues.

Figure 2: Lower is better when looking at latency. This graph shows that at 16,000 bytes, Voltaire InfiniBand with MCE and IBM Websphere Low Latency Messaging takes 1/3 the time it takes Ethernet to transmit the message.

Solution Benefits

• Provides a competitive advantage by supplying the mechanism to make trades faster than the competition
• Up to 75% latency reduction as compared with Ethernet
• 2.75x improvement in message rate using InfiniBand as compared with Ethernet
• Delivers a scalable platform that can grow to help meet future needs
• Reliable network - No dropped packets

Voltaire, HP, Intel and Reuters Solution for Trading
With Reuters RMDS Software, HP C-class Blades and ProLiant Server and Storage Hardware, Voltaire Grid DirectorTM Switches and Software, and Intel Processors

The Voltaire, HP, Intel and Reuters solution on HP ProLiant rack mounted and BladeSystem C-class servers is a specialized deployment of RMDS, in combination with high performance hardware, networking and services that delivers the ultimate system for trading applications. Today, stock exchanges, banks and hedge fund companies often rely on 1 Gb Ethernet to do their trading. This can cost millions of dollars in missed trading revenue because they can’t process the transactions fast enough. This solution done in partnership between HP, Voltaire, Reuters and Intel provides these organizations with a faster, reliable way to conduct trades. To date, the combined solution has shown 48-50% performance and latency improvements over Ethernet.

The solution consists of hardware provided, integrated, tested and supported by HP for Reuters Market Data System software (RMDS). The power of the Reuters, HP, Voltaire and Intel partnership involved in this solution is that customers receive a proven solution with state of the art technology giving them a trading system with the lowest latency and highest throughput in the industry.

"The combination of the Reuters Market Data System, Voltaire InfiniBand solutions and HP platforms solves many of the latency problems our customers face with growing market data and trading volumes. Algo trading firms that use this combination can make more trades in less time, directly improving their organization's revenue."

Michael Parlapiano, EVP, Global Head of Information
Management Solutions, Reuters

Low Latency Market Data Delivery Solutions for the Next Generation Data Center From Voltaire and Wombat
Business units across the capital markets are intent on maximizing the effectiveness of their trading algorithms and strategies by advancing the speed with which they receive prices and related data from the global markets. Voltaire and Wombat have joined forces to deliver a combined solution that sets the new standard for end-to-end latency minimization, improved capacity and greater scalability across commodity servers for market data infrastructures.

Wombat and Voltaire offer the ability to deploy Wombat Financial Software's market connectivity and messaging platform across servers connected by Voltaire's multi-service director-class switches that leverage the InfiniBand standard. The combined solution relies on Voltaire's unique transport library that enables a transparent bypass of traditional OS protocol layers to provide 3-5X higher message throughput, significantly lower latency and CPU overhead. Using the solution, businesses can substantially reduce end-to-end application latency as well as gain linear scalability to address higher market data and trading volumes.

Key Benefits of the Voltaire Solution

• Very low end-to-end latency
• Supports upwards of 500,000 multicast messages per second on a single stream
• Reduced CPU overhead
• Proven scalability to 1000s of nodes

InfiniBand Brings High Performance and Low Latency

Offering high bandwidth of 10 - 60 Gbps, RDMA-based messaging and ultra low latency, InfiniBand is a key technology for addressing market data infrastructure challenges. Voltaire and Wombat, when leveraging 29West's Latency Busters® Messaging, provide financial trading operations with a unique software solution that enables the seamless use of the many advantages InfiniBand offers across their market data infrastructure, including the lowest application-to-application latency in the industry. The solution also leverages Voltaire multi-service switches with integrated InfiniBand, GbE and FC ports which can offload external network traffic to improve the efficiency of the overall solution.