Thomson Reuters Taps Celoxica Tech for FPGA Feed

The feed—which also uses Thomson Reuters software to provide a standardized format, recovery capabilities, feed handler updates and features like static data mapping, and handling day-one changes and corporate actions—was developed as part of a broader revamp of the vendor’s feeds infrastructure to deliver faster data for firms running time-sensitive algorithmic trading strategies that also require “cost-effective, reliable and standardized data across trading venues and asset classes.”

The service comprises an FPGA card for each market, which can be installed on client servers either on-premises or in a co-location facility, allowing multiple cards to be installed on a single server. Clients still need to contract with trading venues for access and connectivity to datafeeds.

“There’s obviously broad appetite for a service of this nature, though the most latency sensitive market participants would develop their own technology. For the others, a feed which offers better data integration and the stability that comes from an established name... is an important part of their market data strategy,” says Bill Ruvo, head of real-time feeds at Thomson Reuters. He declines to provide specific latency figures, but says the “single-digit microsecond latency” is deterministic and not subject to delays around peak times or microbursts of market activity.

The service initially covers full-tick, full-depth data from US equity markets, before expanding to cover US futures and options and European markets over the remainder of this year and 2015. Ruvo declines to say whether any firms are already testing the feed, but says the vendor has been in discussions with “a number of major banks and brokers for several months.”