Celoxica Bows Futures Data-Trading FPGAs

UK-based low-latency feed handler vendor Celoxica has released a set of FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) processor cards that allow clients to apply hardware acceleration techniques to both inbound market data and high-frequency order routing against key pairs of futures markets in the US and Europe.

The first round of FPGAs allow users running single or multi-market strategies to capture data from and trade between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Intercontinental-Exchange, and between NYSE Euronext’s Liffe and Deutsche Börse’s Eurex derivatives markets on a single commodity server—housing one card for inbound data and a second for outbound orders—for each pair of exchanges.

The vendor is making the FPGAs, dubbed Celoxica Futures Container, available on general release after spending the first half of this year building out the combined capabilities and testing with some of its target client base of clients—primarily Chicago-based sell-side firms with high-frequency trading groups or independent HFT firms that already run their trading strategies from exchange co-location or proximity hosting centers and are looking to reduce latency across their futures strategies, says Lee Staines, president of Celoxica in New York.

Staines says clients can use the Container to arbitrage between the different exchanges or hedge one against the other, or use them as underlying markets for rates trading, or can use the cards to trade either exchange on its own. “At the moment, we’re typically working with clients who either want to combine US futures and European futures, or trade against the individual exchanges,” he says.

“We aren’t applying a client’s proprietary algorithm to the FPGA, but we are accelerating the plumbing,” Staines says. “We’re allowing clients to place their algorithmic code into a familiar co-lo environment that already provides all the communications needed to get market data to their strategy and send orders to exchanges and receive confirmations in the fastest time possible.”

The vendor will offer two deployment options: Clients can install the FPGAs in their own co-located servers, or smaller, independent high-frequency trading firms without dedicated co-lo resources can utilize the hardware on a managed service basis in co-lo environments run by potential partners of Celoxica that offer connectivity-as-a-service. “It means that very quickly, firms can apply their strategies with minimal integration work in a known environment,” Staines says.

The Container is available on a subscription basis that includes the FPGA cards, firmware to run the cards, any software or APIs required, and support, maintenance and upgrades, though fees will vary depending on which markets clients connect to, and whether they use both the data and execution capabilities or just use the cards to accelerate market data.

Celoxica had developed market data acceleration for CME last year, and added the accelerated execution component early this year before adding support for ICE data and trading, then connectivity to data and trading for Liffe and Eurex. Staines says the vendor also has a roadmap of other combined-exchange Container offerings, though he declines to say what exchanges are in development.