PHLX Shifting to AMD-based Systems

NEW YORK-Impressed by the performance levels of processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) has been working for more than a year to replace systems based upon the Intel Xeon processors on its trading floor with those running CPUs from AMD, which unveiled its latest chip last week.

PHLX is moving to AMD Opteron-based servers and desktops, says Gene Peters, director of information services for the exchange. They are used "mostly for our office systems, which is e-mail and those standard things," but it is used in "various aspects for our trading floor," Peters says.

On the trading floor, PHLX uses AMD-based systems to support "some of our custom processing, where [end users] can go in and view what's taking place on our options floor," Peters says. AMD-based hardware is also used for handling trade and quoting volumes, he says.

However, AMD-based platforms do not constitute PHLX's primary transaction system-they are in place to support exchange customers, Peters says. The primary transaction platform is supported by Unix-based hardware from Sun Microsystems and fault-tolerant, high-end hardware from Stratus Technologies running the Stratus Virtual Operating System (VOS).

Peters says PHLX uses a variety of Sun Microsystems servers for its trading floors from the Sun Netra 440 servers to the high-end Sun Enterprise 10000.

Prior to selecting systems with AMD processors, the exchange used platforms running the Intel Xeon processors for about five years, Peters says. "We still have a lot of Xeons in our infrastructures, but we've been slowly phasing them out," he says. Xeon-based systems are still being used to support options trading vendor interfaces, he says.

The choice to switch from Intel to AMD came down to "better performance for the same amount of money," Peters says. "We have twice the performance capacity on AMD than we did on Xeon. Most of our systems are redundant [so we] started inserting the Opterons in places where we were having a lot of utilization-mainly for how many quotes, how many processes per second-and that was critical because [performance] keeps bumping up and up. We saw a 50 percent reduction in computing times and processor utilization for the same amount of money," he says.

With its new chip architecture, AMD is touting increased performance and virtualization capabilities as well as the ability to upgrade without altering data infrastructure. The new product, dubbed Next-Generation AMD Opteron processor, has incorporated additional silicon-based features to allow for a hypervisor, which assists with the portioning of the processor during virtualization, according to AMD officials. The company also touts the new chip's power consumption abilities by providing advanced technology that operates in a single-core thermal infrastructure.

AMD has also finished designs on its upcoming quad-core processor, which incorporates four processors on a single die of silicon. It is expected to be available by mid-2007.

Several software companies recently voiced support for AMD's new processor, including VMware, maker of virtualization software, and Novell, distributor of open source SuSE Linux Enterprise 10 (DWT, Aug. 14). In addition, hardware providers like Sun, Egenera, Hewlett-Packard and IBM are already using the new chips and Dell plans to start using them as early as next month.

Peters says the PHLX "eagerly waits for these chips to be incorporated. We use virtualization extensively in our Microsoft Windows office systems, with over 40 virtual machines. This improvement will mean more efficient management and it allows us to get more processing and virtual servers out of one box."

Eric Doyle, global industry manager for financial services at Intel, declines to speak directly about the PHLX, but acknowledges that Intel has had some issues with performance in the past. "AMD has come out with some fairly competitive products," Doyle says. But with the July release of its Xeon Processor 5100 series, dubbed Woodcrest, Doyle says Intel is "entering a phase where we have the best processor [and] customers who have been considering AMD are now looking at Intel."

The 5100 series, which started shipping on June 26, plugs into Intel's Bensley platform, which debuted on May 23. Intel claims the new chipset has a 135 percent performance improvement and a 40 percent reduction in energy consumption over previous models (DWT, July 3).

Chloe Albanesius