Quod Mulls Data Hardware Acceleration

Version 5 of AEP will enable users to process higher volumes of market data "much faster" than before, says Quod chief executive Ali Pichvai. To take advantage of this increased speed and throughput, the vendor will soon begin evaluating potential partnerships with third-party providers of hardware-accelerated data technologies-including hardware-accelerated feed handlers from vendors such as Exegy and Celoxica, and hardware-based middleware platforms from vendors such as Solace Systems-to investigate the potential latency benefits for AEP users.

Pichvai says Quod is more likely to partner with a vendor of hardware-accelerated feed handlers than a hardware-accelerated middleware vendor, because Version 5 of AEP aims to reduce the application's dependence on middleware by making more effective use of data caching and shared memory access.

Also, he says it would be easier to adopt hardware-accelerated feed handlers, since exchange data formats change less often than other exchange interfaces, and thus can be coded onto FPGA cards without requiring frequent and costly revisions.

"On the trading side, the gateways change more often, but for market data, the format and protocol of datafeeds [from exchanges and alternative trading venues] are not changing as much. If you don't have much evolution in market data protocols, then it makes it easier to adopt [hardware-accelerated feed handlers]," he says.

Pichvai says Quod aims initially to limit any partnership to North America, since data throughput rates are considerably higher in the US than in other regions of the world, and as a result, hardware-based data technologies would be most relevant to its clients trading US markets.

Jean-Paul Carbonnier